; and accept the
certain physical law that, in order to renovate the brain day by day, the
growing creature must have plenty of fresh air and play, and that the
child who learns for four hours and plays for four hours, will learn
more, and learn it more easily, than the child who learns for the whole
eight hours; if, in short, they will teach girls not merely to understand
the Greek tongue, but to copy somewhat of the Greek physical training, of
that "music and gymnastic" which helped to make the cleverest race of the
old world the ablest race likewise: then they will earn the gratitude of
the patriot and the physiologist, by doing their best to stay the
downward tendencies of the physique, and therefore ultimately of the
morale, in the coming generation of English women.

I am sorry to say that, as yet, I hear of but one movement in this
direction among the promoters of the "higher education of women." {88} I
trust that the subject will be taken up methodically by those gifted
ladies; who have acquainted themselves, and are labouring to acquaint
other women, with the first principles of health; and that they may avail
to prevent the coming generations, under the unwholesome stimulant of
competitive examinations, and so forth, from "developing" into so many
Chinese-dwarfs--or idiots.

THE AIR-MOTHERS.

"Die Natur ist die Bewegung."

Who are these who follow us softly over the moor in the autumn eve? Their
wings brush and rustle in the fir-boughs, and they whisper before us and
behind, as if they called gently to each other, like birds flocking
homeward to their nests.

The woodpecker on the pine-stems knows them, and laughs aloud for joy as
they pass. The rooks above the pasture know them, and wheel round and
tumble in their play. The brown leaves on the oak trees know them, and
flutter faintly, and beckon as they pass. And in the chattering of the
dry leaves there is a meaning, and a cry of weary things which long for
rest.

"Take us home, take us home, you soft air-mothers, now our fathers the
sunbeams are grown dull. Our green summer beauty is all draggled, and
our faces are grown wan and wan; and the buds, the children whom we
nourished, thrust us off, ungrateful, from our seats. Waft us down, you
soft air-mothers, upon your wings to the quiet earth, that we may go to
our home, as all things go, and become air and sunlight once again."

And the bold young fir-seeds know them, and rattle imp