for the beautiful, by the sight of the finest figures, in the prime of youth, exercising amidst objects and associations of the greatest elegance. Surrounded on every hand by the combined charms of nature and art, the young men were seen exhilarated with athletic sports, and the old imparting wisdom in the presence of the most splendid ideal forms. Then and there physical education began with life and constantly augmented its force. Every festival of childhood was made enchanting with flowers and music; the barge, as it was pushed in boyish sport on the lake, was crowned with garlands; the oars were moved to the sound of sweet recorders,' and the patriotic mother at home sang an inspiring lullaby, as she rocked her infant to sleep in the broad shield of its father. There were wrestlings in the open palaestra, as well as races and heroic games; there were gay revels on the mountain sides, and moonlight dances in the groves.

The field of Olympia was to the Greeks the most sacred enclosure of the gods. The games thereon practiced, among other uses, promoted manly education, by teaching that the body has its honors as well as the intellect. They felt that vast importance belongs to physical agility and strength, not only that the mind may be thus aided in energetic action, but that a firm basis may be laid in a sound body for the exercise of manly virtues. Without physical vigor, the feeble flickerings of the mind are only a gilded halo hovering round decay.'

The national games described in the twenty-fourth book of the Iliad, the eighth of the Odyssey, and by Virgil in the fifth book of the Æneid, all relate to important elements in a manly education. Those ancient festivals had the finest influence upon the inhabitants of the metropolis, and upon those who dwelt the most remote. Every pilgrim through such lands, to such shrines, became Briareus-handed and Argus-eyed: the beautiful scenes, full of patriotic and refined associations which every where arrested his attention, gave him the traveller's 'thirsty eye,' filled his mind with thrilling reminiscences, and caused him to return to his home glowing with brilliant descriptions and burdened with exalted thoughts. It was thus that the youthful Greek mingled with his studies pedestrian exercise and acute observation, formed his body to fatigue, while he stored his mind with lofty ideas, and became equally skilled in handling a sword, building a temple, or subduing a horse.

In the festival of the Panathenæa, as the name imports, all the people of Attica engaged in the celebration, wearing their chaplets of flowers. The sports began early in the morning with races on the banks of the Illissus, in which the sons of the most distinguished citizens contended for the palm. Next came the wrestling and gymnastic contests in the Stadium, succeeded by still more refined competitions in the Odeum, where the most exquisite musicians executed rival pieces on the flute or cithara, while others sang and accompanied their voices with the sweetest instruments. The theme presented to the competitors was the eulogy of Hermodius, Aristogeiton, and Thrasybulus, who had rescued the republic from the yoke of

tyranny. Thus the popular pastimes of the Athenians tended to commemorate the patriots who had served their country, as well as to excite the spectators to an emulation of their virtues. Painters exhibited the fruits of their skill; sculptors adorned the road-side, the groves, and the temples of the gods; poets contended for the dramatic prize, each being allowed to produce four pieces; and the eloquence of history fired with rapture thousands of exulting hearts.

The procession to the temple of Pythian Apollo, which closed the day with religious rites, was composed of different classes of citizens, adorned with garlands, among whom were seen old men of majestic mien, bearing branches of olive; others of middle-age, armed with lances and bucklers as if ready to engage in war; youths, who sang hymns in honor of Minerva; beautiful boys, clad in a graceful tunic; and lastly girls selected from the first families in Athens, attracting every eye by their unequalled charms.

seems

At night there was a torch-race of the most agile youth, stationed at equal distances, the first of whom, on a signal given by the shout of the multitude, lighted his flambeau at the altar of Prometheus, and at the top of his speed handed it to the second, who transmitted it in the same manner to the third, and so on in rapid succession to the last. He who suffered his torch to be extinguished was excluded from the lists, and they who slackened in their pace were exposed to the railleries and blows of the populace. It was necessary to pass through all the stations with success in order to gain the prize. How hard it is to over-estimate the amount of vigor, bodily and mental, which was won from such chaste and inspiring recreations! The ludicrous remark of Frederic the Great, that man more adapted by nature for a postillion than a philosopher,' is not without foundation; but there is no necessary incompatibility between great mental activity and habitual good health, provided proper attention is paid to physical culture. The old maxim that all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy,' is quite true. There is health of mind in innocent hilarity. There is health in bodily sports which combine animated exercise with amusement. There is health of soul in the contemplation of nature, when he who contemplates, adores, and early learns to 'look through nature up to nature's God.' The benefit of moderate excitement is often very great on the moral constitution and physical frame, and should be temperately indulged in by all, according to the predispositions of each. Some inherit a passion for the gun and others for the angle; some are fond of equestrian excursions, while others love to foot it along the quiet shores of lakes and on sublime mountain-tops. Shakspeare gave us a maxim of wisdom in literary pursuits, when he said Study what you most affect;' and in our recreations we should pursue what is most congenial to native tastes. Hard study should be succeeded by hardy exercise in some appropriate form. The foot-ball at Rugby, and the regatta at Eaton, bowling at Harrow, and cricket at Westminster, succeeded by all these invigorating exercises in constant

practice at Oxford and Cambridge, give to England the most elegant and able-bodied scholars in the world.

But vigorous mental development is a prime quality in a manly education. Man is not all soul, therefore he is not conditioned as an angel; neither is he all body, and for this reason he cannot with impunity live as a brute. We have sensibilities as well as senses; spirit as well as flesh. We are a compound of earth and heaven; dust tempered with tears, and quickened with a spark unquenchable; a spirit exiled in a prison of clay, and both tenant and tabernacle must be cared for. It is ignoble to be, like a wild hunter, all exercise and no thought; it is equally suicidal to dignified excellence to be, like too many votaries of science, all thought and no exercise. A sound mind in a sound body was long since deemed the great desideratum; and this we should be most strenuous to attain. To be successful we must be in eye of every exercise.' We must feel that it is better to have a reed that will do us some service than a pike that we have neither the strength nor skill to heave:

'OUR remedies oft in ourselves do lie,
Which we ascribe to heaven; the fated sky
Gives us free scope; only doth backward pull
Our slow designs when we ourselves are dull.'

One must not only be a zealous worshipper of knowledge, but he must learn to pluck the fruit fresh from the tree with a vigorous hand. He must be a devout and active student in the great university of nature, where one can gather materials such as dogmatism and dried preparations' never afford. Careful scrutiny of the world and profound meditation, constitute the most ancient and infallible road to the soundest learning; he who pursues his manly career therein will not be of that feeble class whose listless hand hangs like dead bone within its withered skin,' but vigorously will he grow, refreshed by the purest fountains, and enriched with the most valuable stores. Deep and passionate love of knowledge for its own sake indicates the soul of true scholarship. This is the sun of the heaven within us, around which the elements of our mental being gather in delightful harmony and concentrate their force. Warmed into action by this luminary, and transfigured by its beams, the mind goes forth in action like the son of Tydeus, with glory blazing round it, kindling astonishment and emulous delight. The grand object of schooling is never attained until all the priceless powers of our nature are quickened and fortified by the true, the beautiful, the good and the grand; until each faculty, in its own place and proportion, is thoroughly trained, and our physical and mental energies are moulded to a symmetrical whole, of the purest, holiest and most enchanting harmony.

Education is soul-excitement, and that is the best discipline for spiritual faculties which most effectually stimulates their growth, moulds their awakening energies, elicits and augments their strength. The main question is not what will make youth pedants, or bigots, or partisans, but what will make them men? This will

demand concentration of purpose and liberality of feeling. Concentration is essential to profitable acquisition. The stream, divided into many channels, ceases to flow either deep or strong. To waste one's strength in frivolous endeavors is to covet the transient dazzle of an exploded rocket, rather than the perpetual blaze of the unquenchable sun. Many men of great natural capacities, for want of persevering fixedness of purpose, are utterly lost to the world; men whose intellect is eminently original and creative, competent under suitable discipline to upraise

'A WILDERNESS of building, sinking far.

And self-withdrawn into a wonderous depth,
Far sinking into splendor, without end.'

Unfortunately, however, for themselves and the world, too many neglect wholesome training, and supinely waste their fine energies in one long day of summer indolence.' But mental action cannot be intense unless all the faculties are made to play within a narrow range. The electric fluid is as impotent as the unbounded air it sleeps in, until concentrated in the thunder-cloud. Nature has closely confined the muscles in our frame, in order to give them the highest degree of power in combined action; and in the same way our spiritual capacities, to attain their full force, must be brought to bear on a single point, and work within exclusive limits. It is necessary that even solar heat should be conveyed to a focus of ten thousand beams ere it will burn.

Education is not an abstract theory, a lifeless creed, stored away in the torpid brain like obsolete relics deposited on musty shelves; it is concrete power, generated by the collision of great truths and vital principles, as lightning is elicited by the contact of opposing clouds, and must be brought to bear with instantaneous and irresistible fulminations on the intellect and heart of mankind. Now the source and secret of this master endowment is generosity of feeling. Its possessor will seek knowledge and influence, not for personal aggrandizement, but for the public good. He is not of that dry, phlegmatic and miserable class of professed scholars, 'plunged to the hilt in musty tomes, and rusted in,' who industriously accumulate their petty stores, and are forever bristling up with small facts,' but who labor only for self, and consequently win only contempt. An old author has said that we fatten a sheep with grass, not in order to obtain a crop of hay from his back, but in the hope he will feed us with mutton, and clothe us with wool.' We should replenish the mind with sound principles, and seek the discipline of severe study, in order more successfully to conquer the chicanery of the bar, the sophistry of the senate, the stupidity of the pulpit, and the sinfulness of the world. Education is the armor of the mind; but that armor will be worse than none if it be inflexible from rust, or too ponderous for the wearer's use.

The professed man of letters, who constantly acquires and yet never has the force or genius to produce, acts the ridiculous part of an architect who never executes a plan, or a sculptor who never clips a stone. Of all idlers he is most contemptible who fritters

away talent and existence under such professions. What use is it to be forever familiarizing one's self with books, those monuments of vanished minds,' as D'Avenant admirably termed them, and yet never be vivified with an original thought? This is to resemble Pharaoh's lean kine, constantly eating and yet constantly poor, rather than the more useful worm that spins from its own bowels the robes of monarchs, transforming every leaf it eats into resplendent silk. In national armories we sometimes see large quantities of martial arms curiously arranged on the walls in fantastic forms. How much more impressive they would be if seen glittering from afar, and how much more potent would be their use when grasped by well-disciplined legions rushing to the fight. A single weapon, wielded by a chivalrous and renowned hero, would be more impressive than the holiday show of all the martial implements on earth.

This generosity of feeling and nobleness of purpose, of which we have not time at present to say more, conduce to healthfulness of mind and corresponding nobleness of style. The world has been sufficiently cursed with the stupid ploddings of unproductive_pedants, who, to use a simile which Dr. Young applied to Ben Jonson, pulled down, like Samson, the temple of antiquity on their shoulders, and buried themselves under its ruins.' They are the terrier-gifted hunters of small game; the

-LEARN'D philologists, who chase
A panting syllable through time and space,
Start it at home, and hunt it in the dark
To Gaul, to Greece, and into NOAH's ark.'

There are many persons who set themselves up as teachers and critics, whose intellectual claims to the guardianship of the Muses seem, as Coleridge suggested, analogous to the physical qualifications which adapt their oriental brethren for the superintendence of the harem. Of what pith and bone are the productions of such minds? How strikingly they resemble the tinsel that shines on the dark coffin-lid,' the type and record of defunct powers only:

'KNOWLEDGE and wisdom, far from being one,

Have oft-times no connection. Knowledge dwells
In heads replete with thoughts of other men;
Wisdom in minds attentive to their own.'

The unchivalrous literature of our land and times abounds in 'sentimental episode and milk-and-water ditty;' manhood clothed in other garments than pantaloons, and puling in accents far from masculine. There has come to be a strange inversion of the sexual poles; feminine timidity, feminine vanity and devotion to fine display, feminine lassitude and love of morbid excitement, instead of the vigorous, noble, magnanimous and heroical minds of literature's golden age. Our students, it would seem, emulate those young German ladies described by the historian of the sorrowful age of Werterian letters, who, when pale and languishing sentimentality became the fashion, ' painted themselves white, starved themselves thin, and drank vinegar, in order to get up the genuine invalid look.'