than the gilded prize is to our modern genius. A popular lecturer has
truly remarked, that "we make brilliant mathematicians and miserable
dyspeptics; fine linguists with bronchial throats; good writers with
narrow chests and pale complexions; smart scholars, but not that union,
which the ancients prized, of a sound mind in a sound body. The brain
becomes the chief working muscle of the system. We refine and re-refine
the intellectual powers down to a diamond point and brilliancy, as if
they were the sole or reigning faculties, and we had not a physical
nature binding us to earth, and a spiritual nature binding us to the
great heavens and the greater God who inhabits them. Thus the university
becomes a sort of splendid hospital with this difference, that the
hospital _cures_, while the university _creates_ disease. Most of them
are indicted at the bar of public opinion for taking the finest young
brain and blood of the country, and, after working upon them for four
years, returning them to their homes skilled indeed to perform certain
linguistic and mathematical dexterities, but very much below par in
health and endurance, and, in short, seriously damaged and physically
demoralized." We read with reverence the sublime teachings of Aristotle
and Plato; we mark the grandeur of Homer and the delicate beauties of
Virgil; but we do not seek to reproduce in our modern institutions the
gymnasium, which was the real foundation of their genius. Colleges which
are now entering upon their career, should make ample provision for
those exercises which develop the _physical man._ This lack of bodily
training is common with all classes, and its effects are written in
indelible characters on the faces and forms of old and young.
Constrained positions in sitting restrict the movements of the diaphragm
and ribs and often cause diseases of the spine, or unnatural curvatures,
which prove disastrous to health and happiness. The head should be held
erect and the shoulders thrown backward, so that at each inspiration the
lungs may be fully expanded.