he feelings of men, is the natural,
pre-established difference, which will assert itself without artificial
appliances. And when, by artificial appliances, the degree of this
difference is increased, it becomes an element of repulsion rather than
of attraction.

"Then girls should be allowed to run wild--to become as rude as boys,
and grow up into romps and hoydens!" exclaims some defender of the
proprieties. This, we presume, is the ever-present dread of
school-mistresses. It appears, on inquiry, that at "Establishments for
Young Ladies" noisy play like that daily indulged in by boys, is a
punishable offence; and we infer that it is forbidden, lest unlady-like
habits should be formed. The fear is quite groundless, however. For if
the sportive activity allowed to boys does not prevent them from growing
up into gentlemen; why should a like sportive activity prevent girls
from growing up into ladies? Rough as may have been their play-ground
frolics, youths who have left school do not indulge in leap-frog in the
street, or marbles in the drawing-room. Abandoning their jackets, they
abandon at the same time boyish games; and display an anxiety--often a
ludicrous anxiety--to avoid whatever is not manly. If now, on arriving
at the due age, this feeling of masculine dignity puts so efficient a
restraint on the sports of boyhood, will not the feeling of feminine
modesty, gradually strengthening as maturity is approached, put an
efficient restraint on the like sports of girlhood? Have not women even
a greater regard for appearances than men? and will there not
consequently arise in them even a stronger check to whatever is rough or
boisterous? How absurd is the supposition that the womanly instincts
would not assert themselves but for the rigorous discipline of
school-mistresses!

In this, as in other cases, to remedy the evils of one artificiality,
another artificiality has been introduced. The natural, spontaneous
exercise having been forbidden, and the bad consequences of no exercise
having become conspicuous, there has been adopted a system of factitious
exercise--gymnastics. That this is better than nothing we admit; but
that it is an adequate substitute for play we deny. The defects are both
positive and negative. In the first place, these formal, muscular
motions, necessarily less varied than those accompanying juvenile
sports, do not secure so equable a distribution of action to all parts
of the body; whence it results