well suppose, that, if the jovial divine had kept himself in training for this disgraceful lost art of running, his diary might not have recorded the habit of lying two hours in bed in the morning, “dawdling and doubting,” as he says, or the fact of his having “passed the whole day in an unpleasant state of body, produced by laziness”; and he might not have been compelled to invent for himself that amazing rheumatic armor,—­a pair of tin boots, a tin collar, a tin helmet, and a tin shoulder-of-mutton over each of his natural shoulders, all duly filled with boiling water, and worn in patience by the sedentary Sydney.

It is also to be remembered that this statement was made in 1805, when England and Germany were both waking up to a revival of physical training,—­if we may trust Sir John Sinclair in the one case, and Salzmann in the other,—­such as America is experiencing now.  Many years afterwards, Sydney Smith wrote to his brother, that “a working senator should lead the life of an athlete.”  But supposing the fact still true, that an average red man can run, and an average white man cannot,—­who does not see that it is the debility, not the feat, which is discreditable?  Setting aside the substantial advantages of strength and activity, there is a melancholy loss of self-respect in buying cultivation for the brain by resigning the proper vigor of the body.  Let men say what they please, they all demand a life which shall be whole and sound throughout, and there is a drawback upon all gifts that are paid for in infirmities.  There is no thorough satisfaction in art or intellect, if we yet feel ashamed before the Indian because we cannot run, and before the South-Sea Islander because we cannot swim.  Give us a total culture, and a success without any discount of shame.  After all, one feels a certain justice in Warburton’s story of the Guinea trader, in Spence’s Anecdotes.  Mr. Pope was with Sir Godfrey Kneller one day, when his nephew, a Guinea trader, came in.  “Nephew,” said Sir Godfrey, “you have the honor of seeing the two greatest men in the world.”  “I don’t know how great you may be,” said the Guinea-man, “but I don’t like your looks; I have often bought a man, much better than both of you together, all muscles and bones, for ten guineas.”

Fortunately for the hopes of man, the alarm is unfounded.  The advance of accurate knowledge dispels it.  Civilization is cultivation, whole cultivation; and even in its present imperfect state, it not only permits physical training, but promotes it.  The traditional glory of the savage body is yielding before medical statistics:  it is becoming evident that the average barbarian, observed from the cradle to the grave, does not know enough and is not rich enough to keep his body in its highest condition, but, on the contrary, is small and sickly and short-lived and weak, compared with the man of civilization.  The great athletes of the world have been civilized; the long-lived men