and gentlemen, though they did lead the men
at single-stick, at leaping hurdles, at boxing,
at fencing, at back-sword and quarter-staff, at
lifting weights, at climbing. At all of these
healthy and useful amusements, education, a
little science reflection and comparison, would
give them an advantage over the mere brute
strength and impetuosity of the common men.
They might occasionally offer small prizes, while
the corporals and sergeants could maintain order
and prevent any unfairness, any brutality, or
any undue exhibition of temper.

It is not enough that such exercises should
be spasmodic and occasional; they should be
incessant, in all climates and in all places.
Wherever English soldiers are stationed, there
athletic games should be established, and
incessantly be kept a going. Such sports would
soon, by their pure healthy influence, wean the
drinker from his drink, and the gambler from
his cards. They would do much, to " set up"
our soldier: to widen his chest, to harden his
limbs, and to make him as he should be— the
strongest, hardiest, and most active of English-
men. He surely needs hardening, for Heaven
knows what rough weather and heavy blows he
may have one day to endure; or in what bloody
ditch or red-hot breach, he may have to fight
for his life.

Our army, it must be remembered, is not all
made up of strong countrymen; it is at least
two-thirds composed of poor thin mechanics, of
London prodigals, of decayed spendthrifts, and
the wandering scum of our towns. No mere
drill can give these men broad chests, strong arms,
or quick legs, though regular food and settled
hours make them, in time, stout, red, and hearty.
It is the army with the best and most enduring
stamina that wins— such had Caesar's legionaries.
It is the keenest and alertest intelligence that is
victorious— as in the case of Napoleon versus
Wurmser, when the latter complained that the
young Corsican general did not fight according
to " the old-established rules." It is the good
cause and the pure heart, like Garibaldi's, that
defeats the trained army and the Austrian wooden-
heads. It is the fervid faith, as of the Swiss
mountaineers, that can break up a great power
as if it were an image of ice.

There are wise and far-seeing doctors now
living, who think that from some unknown cause
our race is physically degenerating, and that
our sons are growing up physically weaker
and more nervous than ourselves.* Some think
it is the incessant tea, that has taken the place
of hearty breakfasts of meat and weak wine;
others attribute it to smoking, late hours,
and the increased wear and tear of our brain
and nerves. It is found dangerous now, to
bleed in cases of fever or of apoplexy. Men,
apparently hearty, sink suddenly into old age.
Nervous diseases increase daily. Our social
hours grow every day less healthy and natural.
* We do not adopt this opinion, which is, to the
best of our knowledge, opposed by all Life Office
experience and Annuity Calculations.— ED.

We rise long after the sun and the animals,
long after they are asleep we are wasting our
brains and thinning our blood in heated rooms;
The world is too much with us! Late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers.
Little there is in nature that is ours.

Now, as new forms of dress and diet are
adopted by us all, hereditarily, irrationally,
without reflection, and withoutany knowledge
or thought of their wide-spreading results, it
may be long before we learn how to stop this
physicaldegeneracy. It is, therefore, most
important, that by all means we contrive to keep
our soldiers strong and vigorous,whosoever
else may degenerate.

Every barrack should have a zinc-covered shed,
open to every soldier when off duty, without
fee and at all hours. Gymnastic poles, ropes,
foils, and other such appliances, should be
furnished by government, aided (perhaps) by
regimental subscriptions. The men should or should
not contribute, according to future opinion on
the subject. The soldiers' library should
contain books on all gymnastic subjects; and the
sergeants and corporals should be taught by
proper professors, at the government expense.

We would go even further than this. If an
enormous standing army, occasioning millions
of taxation, must be maintained, in spite of a
hundred and fifty thousand volunteers, why not
make our army as much as possible an army of
good and not an army of evil, a force of industry
and not of idleness, a power for use and not for
show: a great regiment working with smiles
from Heaven on it, and not smiled on from
below? Why should we pay thousands of men,
merely for pipeclaying belts, and standing at
doors, guarding what never did, and never will,
want guarding? Why should we not get work
for our wages? Have we no great national
needs to direct drilled labour upon? Are there
no bog of Allan, no Curragh of Kildare, no
Connemara morasses, to drain, and render fit
or the crops to blossom over; no great national
hill-roads to make; no refuge harbours to pile
up, no Dartmoor to clear, no forest to cultivate?
Suppose we did pay the soldier a few pence
beyond his pay while engaged on these national
works, would one tax-payer grudge it? When
did great national works ever return a
percentage? The Pyramids never paid; the
Coliseum must have been commercially a failure.
It is only the old stupid Chinese conservatism
which bade Galileo fall on his knees, and, on
pain of death, swear before God and the angels
that " the world did not and could not move,"
that would oppose such work.

Were it possible that not merely the idle
soldiers, but also the great shivering army of starving
Englishmen, could now defile before me, I
would then cry in their hearing, in a voice that
should shake the Circumlocution Office and the
Barnacles, these memorable words of one of our
greatest thinkers:

"My misguided friends, I should think some
work might be discoverable for you to become
from a nomadic banditti of idleness, soldiers of