The revival of the Old-Country games of cricket and base-ball affords some of the best examples of a growing desire for athletic sports.  They have many things to recommend them, and, as we conceive, no objectionable features.

The suicidal war waged against trees and birds alike by the early settlers has left but little inducement to follow in this country the field-sports so fashionable in England.  Riding on horseback, however, is now more popular than it has been since our carriage-roads were first laid out.  This exercise is peculiarly beneficial to the feeble in body.  Accelerated inspiration of pure air and a gentle succussion of all the internal organs are blended with that consciousness of power and that self-dependence which the good horseman always feels in the saddle.  Hardly less do we value the intimate acquaintance into which it brings us with the noble animal who bears us, establishing a sympathy which no amount of driving can awaken to its full extent.

Our rivers, lakes, and bays spread around us a vast and inviting field for the cultivation of summer or winter sports.  Boating and sailing are adapted, from their gentleness of motion, even to the most delicate organizations.  Rowing is equally suited to the young and strong.  Boat-clubs are quite popular in our colleges, and we hope they will ere long become so in our academies and minor schools.  Few exercises bring more muscles into play than the steady stroke of the oar.  Few are more exhilarating and pleasant to those who have tried them.  Give us the strong pull through an open bay before all boating on placid lakes or rivers.  The long, well-timed stroke becomes a mere mechanical effort, leaving the mind at liberty to enjoy the sense of freedom, the tonic salt-breeze, and the enlivening scenes of the sea.

When the boats are beached, and the wharf-logs grow, with successive layers congealed from every tide, into huge spindles of ice, the same element offers its glassy surface to the skater.  That skating has actually become fashionable among the gentler sex we regard as the strongest indication of an awakening national taste for exercise.  But there is need of caution.  Most persons skate with too heavy clothes.  The quick movements of the limbs in the changing evolutions of this pastime—­though the practised skater is unconscious of much muscular effort—­quicken the circulation enough to increase palpably the animal heat and produce a very sensible perspiration.  In this exposed condition, the quiet walk home is taken without additional covering, and is the origin of many colds.