Dolorosus, there is something very noble, if you could but discover it, in a perfect human body.  In spite of all our bemoaning, the physical structure of man displays its due power and beauty when we consent to give it a fair chance.  On the cheek of every healthy child that plays in the street, though clouded by all the dirt that ever incrusted a young O’Brien or M’Cafferty, there is a glory of color such as no artist ever painted.  I can take you to-morrow into a circus or a gymnasium, and show you limbs and attitudes which are worth more study than the Apollo or the Antinous, because they are life, not marble.  How noble were Horatio Greenough’s meditations, in presence of the despised circus-rider!  “I worship, when I see this brittle form borne at full speed on the back of a fiery horse, yet dancing as on the quiet ground, and smiling in conscious safety.”

I admit that this view, like every other, may be carried to excess.  We can hardly expect to correct our past neglect of bodily training, without falling into reactions and extremes, in the process.  There is our friend Jones, for instance, “the Englishman,” as the boys on the Common call him, from his cheery portliness of aspect.  He is the man who insisted on keeping the telegraph-office open until 2, A.M., to hear whether Morrissey or the Benicia Boy won the prize-fight.  I cannot say much for his personal conformity to his own theories at present, for he is growing rather too stout; but he likes vicarious exercise, and is doing something for the next generation, even if he does make the club laugh, sometimes, by advancing theories of training which the lower circumference of his own waistcoat does not seem to justify.  But Charley, his eldest, can ride, shoot, and speak the truth, like an ancient Persian; he is the best boxer in college, and is now known to have gone to Canada incog., during the vacation, under the immediate supervision of Morris, the teacher of sparring, to see that same fight.  It is true that the youth blushes, now, whenever that trip is alluded to; and when he was cross-questioned by his pet sister Kate, (Kate Coventry she delights to be called,) as to whether it wasn’t “splendid,” he hastily told her that she didn’t know what she was talking about, (which was undoubtedly true,)—­and that he wished he didn’t, either.  The truth is, that Charley, with his honest, boyish face, must have been singularly out of place among that brutal circle; and there is little doubt that he retired from the company before the set-to was fairly begun, and that respectable old Morris went with him.  But, at any rate, they are a noble-looking family, and well brought up.  Charley, with all his pugilism, stands fair for a part at Commencement, they say; and if you could have seen little Kate teaching her big cousin to skate backwards, at Jamaica Pond, last February, it would have reminded you of the pretty scene of the little cadet attitudinising before the great Formes,