Dr. Gardner, of New York, has lately contributed very important professional observations upon this class of his patients; he describes their physique as infinitely superior to that of ordinary women, wonderfully adapting them not only to the extraordinary, but to the common perils of their sex, “with that happy union of power and pliability most to be desired.”  “Their occupation demands in its daily study and subsequent practice an amount of long-continued muscular energy of the severest character, little recognized or understood by the community”; and his description of their habitual immunity in the ordeals of womanhood reminds one of the descriptions of savage tribes.  But it is really a singular retribution for our prolonged offences against the body, when our saints are thus compelled to take their models from the reputed sinners,—­prize-fighters being propounded as missionaries for the men, and opera-dancers for the women.

Are we literally to infer, then, that dancing must be the primary prescription?  It would not be a bad one.  It was an invaluable hint of Hippocrates, that the second-best remedy is better than the best, if the patient likes it best.  Beyond all other merits of the remedy in question is this crowning advantage, that the patient likes it.  Has any form of exercise ever yet been invented which a young girl would not leave for dancing?

“Women, it is well known,” says Jean Paul, “cannot run, but only dance, and every one could more easily reach a given point by dancing than by walking.”  It is practised in this country under immense disadvantages:  first, because of late hours and heated rooms; and secondly, because some of the current dances seem equally questionable to the mamma and the physiologist.  But it is doubtful whether any possible gymnastic arrangement for a high-school would be on the whole so provocative of the wholesome exercise as a special hall for dancing, thoroughly ventilated, and provided with piano and spring-floor.  The spontaneous festivals of every recess-time would then rival those German public-rooms, where it is said you may see a whole company waltzing like teetotums, with the windows wide open, at four o’clock in the afternoon.

Skating is dancing in another form; both aim at flying, and skating comes nearest to success.  The triumph of this art has been so astonishing, in the universality of its introduction among our girls within the short space of four winters, that it is hardly necessary to speak of it, except to deduce the hope that other out-door enjoyments, equally within the reach of the girls, may be as easily popularized.