arents who cannot bear the noise of their children have
no right to have brought them into the world. The schoolmistress who
enforces silence on her pupils is committing--unintentionally no doubt,
but still committing--an offence against reason, worthy only of a
convent. Every shout, every burst of laughter, every song--nay, in the
case of infants, as physiologists well know, every moderate fit of
crying--conduces to health, by rapidly filling and emptying the lung, and
changing the blood more rapidly from black to red, that is, from death to
life. Andrew Combe tells a story of a large charity school, in which the
young girls were, for the sake of their health, shut up in the hall and
school-room during play hours, from November till March, and no romping
or noise allowed. The natural consequences were, the great majority of
them fell ill; and I am afraid that a great deal of illness has been from
time to time contracted in certain school-rooms, simply through this one
cause of enforced silence. Some cause or other there must be for the
amount of ill-health and weakliness which prevails especially among girls
of the middle classes in towns, who have not, poor things, the
opportunities which richer girls have, of keeping themselves in strong
health by riding, skating, archery--that last quite an admirable exercise
for the chest and lungs, and far preferable to croquet, which involves
too much unwholesome stooping.--Even playing at ball, if milliners and
shop-girls had room to indulge in one after their sedentary work, might
bring fresh spirits to many a heart, and fresh colour to many a cheek. I
spoke just now of the Greeks. I suppose you will all allow that the
Greeks were, as far as we know, the most beautiful race which the world
ever saw. Every educated man knows that they were also the cleverest of
all races; and, next to his Bible, thanks God for Greek literature.

Now, these people had made physical as well as intellectual education a
science as well as a study. Their women practised graceful, and in some
cases even athletic, exercises. They developed, by a free and healthy
life, those figures which remain everlasting and unapproachable models of
human beauty: but--to come to my third point--they wore no stays. The
first mention of stays that I have ever found is in the letters of dear
old Synesius, Bishop of Cyrene, on the Greek coast of Africa, about four
hundred years after the Christian era. He tells