of the painful facts of experience, which are said to tell so different
a tale? This,--that the physical value of education is in no way so
clearly demonstrated as by these very facts. We know what is the
traditional picture of the scholar,--pale, stooping, hectic, hurrying
with unsteady feet to a predestined early grave; or else morbid,
dyspeptic, cadaverous, putting into his works the dark tints of his own
inward nature. At best, he is painted as a mere bookworm, bleached and
almost mildewed in some learned retirement beneath the shadow of great
folios, until he is out of joint with the world, and all fresh and
hearty life has gone out of him. Who cannot recall just such pictures,
wherein one knows not which predominates, the ludicrous or the pitiful?
We protest against them all. In the name of truth and common-sense
alike, we indignantly reject them. We have a vision of a sturdier
manhood: of the genial, open countenance of an Irving; of the homely,
honest strength that shone in every feature of a Walter Scott; of the
massive vigor of a Goethe or a Humboldt. How much, too, is said of the
physical degeneracy of our own people,--how the jaw is retreating, how
the frame is growing slender and gaunt, how the chest flattens, and how
tenderly we ought to cherish every octogenarian among us, for that we
are seeing the last of them! If this is intended to be a piece of
pleasant badinage, far be it from us to arrest a single smile it may
awaken. But if it is given as a serious description, from which serious
deductions can be drawn, then we say, that, as a delineation, it is, to
a considerable extent, purely fanciful,--as an argument, utterly so. The
facts, so far as they are ascertained, point unwaveringly to this
conclusion,--that every advance of a people in knowledge and refinement
is accompanied by as striking an advance in health and strength.

Try this question, if you please, on the largest possible scale. Compare
the uneducated savage with his civilized brother. His form has never
been bent by confinement in the school-room. Overburdening thoughts have
never wasted his frame. And if unremitting exercise amid the free airs
of heaven will alone make one strong, then he will be strong. Is the
savage stronger? Does he live more years? Can he compete side by side
with civilized races in the struggle for existence? Just the opposite is
true. Our puny boys, as we sometimes call them, in our colleges, will
weigh more, lift mo