. As a
modification of this statement, it may be granted that in the cities and
larger towns the school term reaches forty weeks in a year. If you add
one hour as the average amount of study at home, given by pupils of over
twelve years, (and the allowance is certainly ample,) you have four
hours as the utmost period ever given by any considerable class of
children. That there is excess we freely admit. That there are easy
committee-men who permit too high a pressure, and infatuated teachers
who insist upon it, that there are ambitious children whom nobody can
stop, and silly parents who fondly wish to see their children
monstrosities of brightness, lisping Latin and Greek in their cradles,
respiring mathematics as they would the atmosphere, and bristling all
over with facts of natural science like porcupines, till every bit of
childhood is worked out of them,--that such things are, we are not
inclined to deny. But they are rare exceptions,--no more a part of the
system than white crows are proper representatives of the dusky and
cawing brotherhood.

Or yet again, do we mean to assert that no attention need be given to
the formation of right physical habits? or that bodily exercise ought
not to be joined to mental toils? or that the walk in the woods, the row
upon the quiet river, the stroll with rod in hand by the babbling brook,
or with gun on shoulder over the green prairies, or the skating in the
crisp December air on the glistening lake, ought to be discouraged? Do
we speak disrespectfully of dumb-bells and clubs and parallel bars, and
all the paraphernalia of the gymnasium? Are we aggrieved at the mention
of boxing-gloves or single-stick or foils? Would it shock our nervous
sensibilities, if our next-door neighbor the philosopher, or some
near-by grave and reverend doctor of divinity, or even the learned judge
himself, should give unmistakable evidence that he had in his body the
two hundred and odd bones and the five hundred and more muscles, with
all their fit accompaniments of joints and sinews, of which the
anatomists tell us? Not at all. Far from it. We exercise, no doubt, too
little. We know of God's fair world too much by description, too little
by the sight of our own eyes. Welcome anything which leads us out into
this goodly and glorious universe! Welcome all that tends to give the
human frame higher grace and symmetry! Welcome the gymnastics, too,
heavy or light either, if they will guide us to a more ha