Gymnasia are somewhat patronized by the civilians.  The art of fencing is a national accomplishment, and few gentlemen complete their education without the instructions of the maitre d’escrime.  The savate is a rude exercise in vogue among rowdies, and consists in kicking with the peasant’s wooden shoe.  The French are a tough, but not a large or powerful race.  The same amount of training dispensed among as large a proportion of the youth of this country would show much greater results.

The British soldier has long been considered by his own nation as a model of manliness.  He owes his long limbs and round chest to his ancestors and his mode of life before enlisting.  While on the home-service, he does not yet exercise enough to harden him or to ward off disease.  Recent returns show a higher comparative rate of mortality in the British army from consumption than among other Englishmen.  His close barracks, unvarying diet, and listless life explain it all.  His countrymen and countrywomen, however, who have the time and means, largely cultivate athletic sports.  The English lady is noted for her long walks in the open air, and for the preservation of her youthful bloom,—­the English gentleman for his red face, broad shoulders, and happy digestion.

How do we compare with them in vigor and attention to gymnastics and health-giving exercises?  Better than we did ten years ago, but still not very favorably.

The Western Border-States are noted for the production of a large and hardy race.  New Hampshire and Vermont contribute a good share of the tall and well-developed men who yearly recruit the population of our Eastern cities.  Let a generation pass, however, and we find the offspring of such sires with equally capacious frames, but far less muscular power.  The skeleton is laid of a man mighty in strength, but the filling-in is wanting.  Broad-jointed bones swing listlessly in their sockets, the head projects, and the shoulders bend, under the influence of a sedentary life.  The laboring and mechanical classes bring certain groups of muscles to perfection in development and dexterity, but present few instances of an harmonious organization.  Commercial and professional men do not accomplish even a limited muscular development.  For the other sex, Nature seems to have provided a certain immunity from the necessity of active exercise for the rounding and completion of their bodies.  The lack of fresh air, however, soon tells with them a fatal story of fading complexions and departing bloom.  That ethereal beauty which peculiarly marks the American woman is also the earliest to decay.  As they are the prettiest, so are they the soonest passees of any Northern nation.  Could they but realize that exercise in the open air is Nature’s great and only cosmetic, the reproach of early old age would cease.  Nothing will give that peach-bloom to the cheek and that peculiar sweetness to the eye which a long walk through the fields, of a clear October day, bestows unbought.