many of the German common-schools one or two hours are given daily to gymnastic exercises with apparatus, with sometimes the addition of Wednesday or Saturday afternoon; and this was the result, as appears from Gutsmuth’s book, of precisely the same popular reaction against a purely intellectual system which is visible in our community now.  In the French military school at Joinville, the degree of Bachelor of Agility is formally conferred; but Horace Mann’s remark still holds good, that it is seldom thought necessary to train men’s bodies for any purpose except to destroy those of other men.  However, in view of the present wise policy of our leading colleges, we shall have to stop croaking before long, especially as enthusiastic alumni already begin to fancy a visible improvement in the physique of graduating classes on Commencement Day.

It would be unpardonable, in this connection, not to speak a good word for the hobby of the day,—­Dr. Lewis, and his system of gymnastics, or, more properly, of calisthenics.  Aside from a few amusing games, there is nothing very novel in the “system,” except the man himself.  Dr. Windship had done all that was needed in apostleship of severe exercises, and there was wanting some man with a milder hobby, perfectly safe for a lady to drive.  The Fates provided that man, also, in Dr. Lewis,—­so hale and hearty, so profoundly confident in the omnipotence of his own methods and the uselessness of all others, with such a ready invention, and such an inundation of animal spirits that he could flood any company, no matter how starched or listless, with an unbounded appetite for ball-games and bean-games.  How long it will last in the hands of others than the projector remains to be seen, especially as some of his feats are more exhausting than average gymnastics; but, in the mean time, it is just what is wanted for multitudes of persons who find or fancy the real gymnasium to be unsuited to them.  It will especially render service to female pupils, so far as they practise it; for the accustomed gymnastic exercises seem never yet to have been rendered attractive to them, on any large scale, and with any permanency.  Girls, no doubt, learn as readily as boys to row, to skate, and to swim,—­any muscular inferiority being perhaps counterbalanced in swimming by their greater physical buoyancy, in skating by their dancing-school experience, and in rowing by their music-lessons enabling them more promptly to fall into regular time,—­though these suggestions may all be fancies rather than facts.  The same points help them, perhaps, in the lighter calisthenic exercises; but when they come to the apparatus, one seldom sees a girl who takes hold like a boy:  it, perhaps, requires a certain ready capital of muscle, at the outset, which they have not at command, and which it is tedious to acquire afterwards.  Yet there seem to be some cases, as with the classes of Mrs. Molineaux at Cambridge, where a good deal of gymnastic enthusiasm is created among female pupils, and it may be, after all, that the deficiency lies thus far in the teachers.