less limbs, and throbbing brains of our first scholars in Harvard, Yale, or Princeton! But there is a medium, doubtless, between the ancient and modern discipline, by which we might secure the benefit and exclude the vices of both. And until some measure of this kind is adopted, we must continue to have our hearts agonized by the spectacle of brilliant scholars, dragging out a miserable existence in unstrung and dilapidated systems, the mind, with all its tastes, faculties, and energies, tuned like an angel's harp, and performing all its fearful and wonderful operations to a charm, while its earthly companion seconds its high functions in the feeblest manner, and jars and grates with its crazy aches and ills in harsh discords amid the sublime concert of intellectual and spiritual harmonies. In truth, how many a glorious idea has been stillborn from physical prostration! How many a fine rhyme has come halting off from the blunted sense of an aching brain! What bitter drops of gall have flowed from the pen of the dyspeptic! What dark views of human nature, and what censorious estimates of character, have been shaded by the sombre gloom of the jaundiced eye! What insane theories and morbid tastes have been engrafted on the stock of literature by the non-digestion of a dinner, or a twinge of neuralgic pain! Such, to be sure, are the magnificent resources of the mind, and its daring spirit of independence, that it will often vindicate its inborn and indestructible capacity in spite of disease and pain, reign lord of the ascendant, no matter how agonizing the tension of the nerves, and work on with almost preternatural energy, though sinews crack and blood vessels burst; but how much more sound and beautiful would the masterpieces of literature have been, had they proceeded from healthy minds in healthy bodies, instead of being born, as has often been the case, of gin and genius, of fancy and headache, of blindness and seraphic imagination, of angelic fancy and a broken heart! In the early history of this country, the Olympic games of our people were hunting, woodcraft, and Indian, French, and Revolutionary wars. The wild forests developed the muscles of our fathers, and cottage toil strengthened noble mothers. of heroes and patriots. A hardy life in rural pursuits in the open air is still the mighty rampart of our nation against an army of diseases, and the effemination of a whole race of men. But unfortunately, as our cities grow, as civilization waxes complex and luxurious, and the classes addicted to professional, mercantile, and sedentary life are multiplied, the physical stamina are in danger of succumbing under the fascinations of easy dignity, and busy idleness, and physical indulgence, even when free from the blight of vice. It needs to be rung into the ear of every educator, as with the peal of a trumpet, that the body cannot be neglected with impunity; that in its effeminated capacities the most morbid and monstrous passions will hold their saturnalia; and that only in its vigorous exercise and expansion, as well as in the development, culture, and equipment of the intellect, and the enriching and purifying of the heart, can the world have "assurance of a man." No school or college with any pretensions to be level with the spirit of the age ought to proceed upon the old system of drugging the intellect to satiety with knowledge, and leaving the physical and moral powers comparatively uncared for, since only as all the capacities are harmoniously unfolded can any one of them attain its maximum of strength, usefulness, and happiness. The ancient philosophers can yet teach us many a lesson of high wisdom; but they can give us no more significant symbol of the fine balance of their systems than the lovely walks of the gymnasium, the arena of active sports for innumerable youths, musical with the voices of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. Nor is the whim to be tolerated, that nothing will benefit the child in education, or the patient in disease, except what he fancies and likes, and that, if bodily exercises are distasteful, they will prove fruitless. The child has many a lesson set to learn against which he relucts, but the very energy called forth in overcoming his dislike proves a wholesome discipline to his forming character. And the patient must take many a pill which his soul loathes; but what is bitter in the mouth becomes sweet in the stomach, and matures into health in due time. So, in this office of the physical man, a walk, a game, a run, a ride, or a feat of strength may not always accord with our inclinations, and if it does not, it will doubtless be entered into with the less spirit, and result in the less good. But it needs to be known, both by educator and physician, that exercise is good, however distasteful at first, that we cannot stretch out an arm or a foot, or walk, or run, or leap, without freshening the life-currents of the system, sending new flashes of electric warmth along the nerves and muscles, and scattering a cloud of those blue and black devils that buzz around the ears of poor sedentary stu dents, stayers at home, and women imprisoned in nurseries, and amid their household cares. Dryden long ago sung: "The first physicians by debauch were made, By chase our long-lived fathers earned their food, God never made his work for man to mend." Many a poor, pining invalid needs but to shake himself free from the palsying incubus of imagined inability to move, and to plunge into the open air, Heaven's tonic bath of ether, and, as he gets strength by gentle and judicious repetition, to mount a horse or to practise the gymnastic movements; and a sense of returning health would soon seat itself in every sense and limb. Many a wanderer to distant climes for health, has a fountain of Hygiene in his own bosom, which needs but the magic wand of the gymnast to unseal it, and he would drink healing and vigor from its sparkling waters. Many a life is worn heavily and wearily away, a burden to the possessor, a sadness to friends, and a drawback from the happiness of society, which requires but the old homely prescription of Galen or Celsus to give it "beauty for ashes, and the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness." Whatever may be thought of the theory of Kinesipathy as a mode of treatment for disease, we cannot doubt that the kneading processes of vigorous muscular movements, the invigoration of repeated exercises, the deepened inspiration and the quickened perspiration of rapid play with the Indian clubs, or the dumb-bells, are the legitimate preventive and cure of a score of diseases. Nothing should be done rashly, or without the consultation and permission of one's physician; but with this proviso the way is clear. The use of drugs and medicines has but a limited range at the most, — is an evil invoked to overcome a greater evil, one thief set to catch another. But the beauty and perfection of the gymnastic cure is that it chimes in with the continued normal state of the body, and creates health while it is itself health. We look to see, therefore, the old art redeemed from the foul uses to which it has often been put, and employed in qualifying man to act well his part, as a body made of the earth, and as a soul destined to immortality. Strength, health, and beauty are to be quarried out of the rich materials stored away in human nature by a bountiful Creator. The greatest and the best lie near us, and humble herbs grow at our door, that can calm the fiercest diseases. There is required but the application of a normal, natural education even to our dyspeptic, deformed, and degraded race, to create new wonders of physical grace and vigor, equal to those of the Grecian time, adorned and sanctified by a coronet of Christian virtues never known to the Porch or the Academy. ART. IV. Mount Lebanon. A Ten Years' Residence, from 1842 to 1852; describing the Manners, Customs, and Religion of its Inhabitants, with a Full and Correct Account of the Druse Religion; and containing Historical Records of the Mountain Tribes, from Personal Intercourse with their Chiefs and other Authentic Sources. By COLONEL CHURCHILL, Staff Officer of the British Expedition to India. London: Saunders and Otley. 1853. 8vo. 3 vols. pp. 390, 398, 399. THE road from Damascus to Beyrout across the ranges of the Lebanon is annually followed by travellers enough to form It usually finishes the winding line of a Palestine a caravan. pilgrimage, and joins the most wearisome physical experiences to the most glorious impressions of natural scenery. Most travellers hurry over it, possibly diverging for a day or two to see the ruins of Baalbec or the Cedars, call hastily upon the Consul of their nation, draw largely upon their bankers, square accounts with the dragoman and the mule men, and take the steamer next morning; forgetting, in the rapture of being "homeward bound" and finding Christian comforts, to inquire anything about the region they have traversed. There is no end to "Itineraries" of Palestine and Egypt. If the Via Dolorosa, with its stations, be not as well known as the Strand and Broadway, with their theatres and shops, it is the fault of readers, and not of writers. A Bostonian can find in his public libraries more about Mount Zion than about his own Beacon Hill, more about the Arabian Desert than the Back Bay flats; and the Jewish University of Tiberias has hardly fewer visitors who tell its shows and methods, than the Christian Universities of Cambridge in Old and New England. In this endless succession of "Travels in the East," the Lebanon is, we venture to think, unduly neglected. It is a too important region of Syria to be dismissed in a dozen concluding pages, which tell how the way-worn traveller was caught in snow-banks, was cheated at last by his servants, and felt his heart beat joyfully at getting away from the land of infidels. There are other things worth recording besides the measurements of the huge blocks of the Heliopolis temple, with wise conjectures about the miracle of their raising. The old grove of Cedars-albeit it justifies a pleasant paragraph about Solomon and Hiram, and the new "House 99 on Mount Moriah, with appropriate reflections does not exhaust the forest wealth of the mountains which it crowns. Nor are we quite satisfied to have the Christian condition and Christian sects of the region confined to a brief statement of what the American missionaries have done or are trying to do. In vain we look, in nineteen twentieths of the books of travel, for any valuable information about this part of Syria. Dr. Robinson seems to have become faint with over-exertion before he reached the latitude of the mountains, and gives us his inten |