ing himself down into his chair and writing. In winter he was to be found at his desk till four, or even five o'clock in the morning-in summer till towards three." How strange must this scene have seemed to those darkling spectators watching across the dell, in which the Lintra bach or burn tinkled unseen beneath the stars, the solitary lighted window opposite, the tall worn figure passing and repassing, the inspired pale countenance, worn and wea ry, with which the poet turned to his work! The long summer nights which thus passed over him were wearing away his enfeebled strength, and his days were already numbered; but there is something which brings the tears to our eyes in this glimpse. across the years, of the lonely poet. Was the saintly maiden in heroic mail standing by him in the silence while the burn sang softly and the stars glowed silent in the midsummer sky? Did he pause, like his great hero, to contemplate those shining mysterious orbs with the quiet and solemn wonder of an intelligence as great as they? No doubt the watchers on the opposite height thought of those night scenes when they flocked in the eager crowd to the theatre to see the Maid in her glory and agony, and to watch breathless the last moments of Wallenstein. The picture is one which will appeal to the sympathies of all. It is comfortable to know that the gentle poet, to whom friendship and love were as the breath of his nostrils, had fully and richly all that better part of success which is dear to the poetic soul. He was never rich, but his country set him in her heart, and wherever he went honor and tender homage surrounded him. Once after the performance of his "Maid of Orleans," the beautiful crown of all his poetical works, the whole audience hurried out to the doors of the theatre, and made an avenue for him to pass, holding up their children to see the glory of their race. He had the warm friendship and admiration of Goethe, the greatest intellect of the time, and was surrounded by the affection of all worth caring for in Germany. A tender enthusiasm for himself-so gentle always, so friendly, tender, and true-as well as for his noble poetry, seems to have filled the country and universal heart. His last years were clouded by constant sufferings, and he died at the age of forty-five, in the midst of his days, while yet no whit of his mental strength was abated. In May, 1805, a cold, ungenial spring, breathing chill death to the delicate frame, he ended his many sufferings. Those whom he loved best were round his bed. His youngest child, an infant of seven months old, he kissed and blessed when the end approached, gazing at the helpless creature with that unspeakable, pathetic resignation of his natural trust into God's hands, which is perhaps the last and supremest sacrifice the heart can make. When one of the anxious watchers asked how he felt, he answered with a smile, "Calmer and calmer." Many things were growing clear to him, he added, as he himself disappeared from all who loved him into the last darkness. It was a death-scene worthy of so serene and pure a spirit. We are told that no one dared to tell Goethe of his friend's end. He read it after a while in the pale faces and averted looks of his attendants, and in the shadow of death that fell upon the place. He himself, an older man, was destined long to survive the good and gentle Schiller, the lifelong contrast between them lasting longer even than existence. They stand like the Spirit of Earth and the Spirit of Heaven working together in that vast and shadowy German land which they revealed. Goethe, grand egoist, apostle of life, enjoyment, beauty, yet expounder of the uttermost contempt of men and life which can find expression in human words--a demigod, un-human, un-moral, full of infinite forbearance, toleration, impartiality; capable of passion and of kindness, but little of love-is without doubt the greatest. But how tenderly beside him rises the pale figure, worn with many troubles, so much less massive, so much more spiritual; passionate for good and against evil, not passive but intense in moral purity-the celestial against the earthly! "His conscience was his muse," said Madame de Stael, the brilliant Frenchwoman who wearied Schiller; but nothing more vividly and tenderly true has been said of him. It expresses at once his genius and his life.—Blackwood's Magazine. PHYSICAL EDUCATION. Qui studet optatam cursu contingere metam, Ar a time when national safety depended on the superiority of individual muscular exertion, rather than of fefined strategics and polemical machinery-when a battle resembled rather a scramble of wild beasts, in which the strongest took the best share of the booty, than a united, organised, and scientific system-institutions tending to a development of the bodily powers began to be recognised among the Greeks as advantageous, if not necessary to their military success. In the poems of Homer we find traces everywhere of that physical prowess which appears to form the exclusive subject of admiration for early civilisation. The panegyric of Achilles, though presenting little attraction to a general of the present day -we refer to the attribute of swift-footed, which so often accompanies the name of that chieftain-was considered an excellent qualification at the time of the siege of Troy. But we are compelled to think that the same poet, when he asserts that racers were sometimes invisible, from their excessive swiftness, is drawing rather from the fertile source of his imagination, than from the presence of an observed fact. That art which the necessity of war had introduced, was afterwards sustained by the love of pleasure and glory. The gymnasts being accustomed to contend naked -a circumstance which is recalled to the reader by their name-in the sight of the whole of Greece, not content with their simple strength of body, began, in addition, to affect the praise of form. To this fact the excellence of Grecian sculpture may in some measure be attributed. In proportion, however, as the glory and the celebrity of the Olympic games increased, their practical utility declined. Men devoted themselves to the training of a particular set of muscles for particular exercises, no longer regarding a general physical improvement, but aiming at the crown of olive for some feat of partial dexterity or strength. With every succeeding Olympiad, men strove more and more not to enable themselves to endure all wants and all temperatures in their varied campaigns, but to perform idle feats in one situation at home. Thus this celebrated festival, of which the lyric poet of Thebes, on whose lips the legend says the bees of Hymettus left their honey, has sung with a magnificence of style and boldness of expression befitting its ancient origin, degenerated at last into a mere show, and thus the Greeks, by mistaking the means for the end, defeated the purposes of this early institution of their forefathers. The history of the Olympic games has a moral, which may still be useful to the gymnasts of a later and more civilised age. It is this: Exercise should be general, not particular, unless for a particular defect. Socrates, in that Republic which nowhere was, nor in all probability will be, said that he would not labor like those who run in the racecourse, that he might make his legs strong, while his shoulders and other parts of his body remained weak, nor only as a pugilist, to make his shoulders strong, not caring for his legs; but so that by exercising all his limbs, all might receive a proportionate increase in agility and strength. The observation may well apply not only to a disproportionate exercise of any part of the body in comparison with the whole, but to a disproportionate exercise of the mind in comparison to the body. Philera of Cos, says an old writer, was very skilful in making hexameters. He was also said to be healthy; but he was so singularly thin, that against damage or injury from a high wind, lest he should be overthrown or carried away by it, he was obliged to fortify his feet by lead. This distressing instance of partial culture may be objected to as apocryphal or a myth; but a walk in the country in the vicinage of either of our university towns, will teach us the same lesson, though in a less startling and incredible manner. Men, in common with most other animals, are furnished with legs; the possession is a fact, but their object is a matter of dispute. To the footman in plush, for instance, they appear to be advertisements whereby he may gain or retain a situation; to the manager of a theatre, on his corps de ballet, likewise as an advertisement whereby he may increase his dramatic revenue; to the surgeon, again, on other people gene rally, as affording facilities for amputation and increased scientific enjoyment; to the hard-reading university student-by which term we do not intend to represent a class, but an exception-they are means necessary to be employed in taking a "constitutional." A mathematician, who has been studying cubic equations all day, determines on taking a walk to keep himself in health; he is desirous of finding out the true heliocentric latitude of Venus on the 25th of May, 1813, at 30 minutes, 54 seconds past 9 in the morning; he takes one last lingering look at the work he is studying, and, treasuring up the inclination of her orbit to the ecliptic, puts on his hat, and rushes out of his rooms-perhaps oversetting his scout coming upstairs with his tea-things on his way. He walks for three miles, turns, and walks back three miles he has seen nothing, heard nothing, felt nothing; but he has thought of Venus, and determined that her latitude must be south descending. He has forgotten, however, that the mind requires change of scene as well as the body, and that the corpus sanum, the object of his temporary ambition, is dependent in no slight degree on the sana mens. It may be asserted that gymnastic excellence, considered by itself, is of little use; that the occasions are few on which society requires us to leap over a fivebarred gate, or to climb a pole, or to hang with our head downwards. Though this be true, it is apparent to every one, that health is generally found in conjunction with strength (we except the so-called strength of constitution, a phenomenon of which when found, as it frequently is, in persons of the least perfect health, we can here offer no explanation), and that strength is without doubt increased by muscular exertion. The connection between life and health is too patent to be insisted on. For some other purpose, then, is the leaping-pole necessary than that of avoiding the necessity and delay of clambering over or unlocking gates; it is necessarywe speak generally-for our strength, the prolongation of our health, our existence. Life and health walk hand in hand; health is nothing but integrity of life; disease is nothing but an offence and abbreviation of it. Gymnastic exercise will not under all circumstances be successful, but, cæteris paribus, it will be in creating fine men. By which expression is not to be under stood plump or fat men, for that fatness is the result rather of ease than of labor may be gathered from a visit to the cattle show. Theagenes, the Thasian, is reported by Athenæus to have eaten a whole ox in two days, a praise which is also attributed to Milo of Crotona. These men were both protagonists in the gymnasium; but, we have no authority for supposing, as we might suppose, considering the amount of their food, that they were unusually distinguished for embonpoint. We have said before that exercise should be general. A game at ball, known to the Greeks under the name of sphæromachy, a game in which Nausicaa with her companions was engaged when disturbed by Ulysses at the riverside, the pila trigonalis of Rome, seems to be admirably calculated for exercising almost the whole order of muscles in the human frame. It would hardly, perhaps, at the present day be considered worthy of a place amongst gymnastic exercises; but that it is an exercise of the greatest advantage there can be little doubt, and more dignity may be imparted to it by mentioning it under other names, as football or cricket, which, says Johnson, is a sport in which the contenders drive a ball with sticks in opposition to each other. This definition would, in fact, apply equally well or better to hockey; but, on reflection, we may perhaps discover, without the aid of the lexicographer, that cricket, our national pastime, of which we are so justly proud, is essentially and primarily a game at ball. Military ardor, combined with a love of their country, has formed our youths into various Rifle Companies, in which the exercises prescribed are advantageous for the same reason, viz., general muscular development, though perhaps to a lesser extent. The sole difference which formerly distinguished medicinal from athletic gymnastics, was the adjustive superintendence which prevailed in the former, accommodating the exercises to the particular pupil, while the latter had only in its view the production of the greatest amount of bodily strength or agility, entirely disregarding particular relations. The distinction is to some extent displayed in the different methods of education adopted respectively by our private and public schools. Medicinal gymnastics varied its prescriptions of the quantity or quality of exercise to be taken, according to the dif ference of sexes, temperaments, age, climate, and seasons. It included dietetics; a portion of medicine before unknown, but now, as we are aware, of high repute. Medicinal gymnastics soon fell into minutiæ as numerous as they were absurd. Under its régime were included directions as to walking in the sun or the shade, the proper time of walking, and when we ought to walk slowly, and when it was so necessary to walk quickly, or to run. Games were also devised for the preservation of the health by the exercise of the fingers. To such extreme minuteness was this art carried, which began by simple and wholesome regulations, but degenerated by refinement into the production of luxury, effeminacy, and sloth. Medicinal gymnastics are now no more; but their spirit, in its early simplicity, still exists in every well regulated gymnasium. The lines taken from the Roman satirist, with which we have introduced this essay, may be thought to refer simply to medicinal gymnastics as a dietetic caution; but they are equally applicable to, and may with advantage be considered by, the athletic gymnasts of the present time. "It was," says Cicero, "somewhat more glorious in Greece to have been the conqueror in the Olympic games, than at Rome to have obtained the honors of a triumph"-the crowns, palms, acclamations, and festivities which in the days of old bestowed so much glory on the successful athlete, were afterwards considered too transitory, unless they were succeeded by others more enduring, and secured to him for the term of his natural life. honors were those accorded to him under the protection of the laws, one of the greatest of these being the privilege of taking a front seat at the public games. Such front seat was well given to those whom the Greeks at least regarded as demigods Such Another privilege of the conquerors, in which the useful was joined to the honorable, was that of being maintained for the rest of their days at the expense of their country, a privilege which was at last found to interfere too much with the civil list of the Emperor. The exemption from every tax or civil burden was not one of the least of the advantages they enjoyed; but it was necessary, in order to obtain it, to have been crowned at least three times at the games. The desire to immortalize the victorious competitors put in action several organs which are supposed popularly to conduce to that result, such as poetical writings, statues, inscriptions, and commemorations in the public archives. At the termination of the festival one of the first cares of the agonothete or president was to inscribe in the public register the name and country of the conqueror, and the nature of the combat in which he was victorious. Their praises became among the Greeks one of the principal subjects of lyric poesy; it is on this subject, as we have mentioned, that all the odes of Pindar are written, divided into four books, each of which bears the name of the games where the athletes whose victories are celebrated in these undying poems had signalized themselves. Though the conqueror of the present day enjoys few of these advantages, though his name is no longer entered on the public records, and he is bound to pay his taxes as any other victorious member of society, though the art of Phidias and Praxiteles is no more employed in transmitting to ages to come the symmetry of his figure or the beauty of his expression, he will yet feel the advantages of physical training in a longer life than he would, humanly speaking, otherwise have enjoyed, and will be able to show rewards, awaking and preserving in the bosom of his friends esteem and admiration both of the giver and the receiver. But our competitor enjoys a few negative advantages which it would be unfair to omit. He is no longer obliged to anoint himself all over with the composition of wax and fat known as ceroma, nor does the punishment of the cæstus ever render him a stranger to his dearest friends, his physiognomy darkened and confused, sans teeth, sans eyes, sans nose, sans every thing," but glorious withal in an olive crown. The pancratium exists no longer, in which he might be attacked in every method which nature or a cultivated imagination, subject to the proviso that no artificial weapons were to be used, could suggest to his antagonist, a game which was afterwards restricted by conditions, that of not pulling out more than one eye, introduced by Sostratus, being considered the most humane on record. Entertainments of this kind, have fortunately given way to the progress of improved feeling, but others with these have been banished without so reasonable a cause for their exile. The pila or ball is too generally and without cause despised; throwing the javelin is entirely discontinued; pitching the quoit is confined to agricolous persons after their day's toil; wrestling, long a favorite athletic exercise in England, for the discontinuance of which in the gymnasia we see no reason other than the mutability of fashion, now belong almost exclusively to the impetuous and unscientific schoolboy, in whose vernacular this invigorating exercise is more generally described as a bear fight, and we believe is generally falling into contempt; the tournament evidently derived from the Ludus Trojæ, is the subject of antiquarian research; the chariot race is in the same state of practical disuse, revived only occasionally and unmethodi cally on the Derby Day or the Spring Meeting. 66 Some degree of gymnastic training seems universal. Captain Cook, in the second volume of the account of his voyage to the Pacific Ocean and the Sandwich Islands, relates that the natives play at bowls with pieces of whetstone, in shape resembling a small cheese. They also use, in the manner that we throw quoits, small flat rounded pieces of the writing slate, of the diameter of the bowls, but scarcely an quarter an inch thick, extremely well polished." We have seen a description of a Cingalese play, which perhaps, from the rude nature of the performance, could hardly be ranked among the productions of the dramatic arts. This entertainment commenced with the feasts of tumblers, whose naked bodies were ornamented all over with white crosses. These men walked on their hands and threw themselves round over head and heels, and boys formed themselves into a wheel, in all respects resembling the performances of the acrobats of the present day in England; but the principal feature of the play was a wrestling match, which, says the reporter, "conveyed sensations by no means agreeable, as it produced the idea of occasioning uneasiness to the principal performers." Some of the later historians of Rome speak with consternation of the manner in which the Germans, by the aid of their frameæ, which appear to have been simply leaping poles, bounded over the pikes of the foremost ranks or sprang upon the hostile battlements; and Tacitus alludes to certain games, in which the German youth, naked and unarmed, danced amidst pointed spears and drawn swords, displaying wonderful quickness of eye, elasticity of limb, and fearlessness of temperament. During the Middle Ages the peculiar mode of warfare introduced by the northern nations rendered it of the utmost importance that the knights and men-at-arms should be subjected to a system of severe physical training. Hence they were taught to sustain during the heat of the day a heavy load of armor, to carry large burdens, to run for a length of time, to climb tall ladders by the aid of their arms alone, to swim, to ride the great horse, and to run with a spear against a target so arranged that he who missed or struck foul received in return a blow from a pole or bag of sand attached to it. The Roman Thermæ were originally derived from the Greek gymnasia, their original name being Palæstræ. The term Thermæ was taken from the frequent use of hot baths, which seemed to the Romans a necessary ingredient in any athletic exercise. Their original character was very soon lost; they became at last fashionable localities in which to spend the morning, not unlike our Assembly Rooms at Bath and Cheltenham. The generality of the Roman public went there simply to bathe, a few for medicinal purposes, and the rest to listen to various philosophers and rhetoricians who were accustomed to take that opportunity of declaiming in public, or to contemplate, lolling on cushions very much at their ease, the feats of hired athletes, instead of taking a part in the exercise themselves, as had been done by their less effeminate ancestors. The remains of the Thermæ, which exist at the present day, will give the readers some conception of their former magnificence. Their convenience and adaptability to the purposes for which they were designed is testified by Martial in an epigram, wherein he draws a comparison by no means flattering to the Roman Emperor.* Should any Roman youth in the time of the Empire wish by chance to enter into any con |