parently claiming some sort of
connection with them (the same concern, as the pirates of
trade-marks say), have risen up another set of persons, against
whom I desire to caution my readers and my hero, and to warn the
latter that I do not mean on any pretense whatever to allow him
to connect himself with them, however much he may be taken with
their off-hand, "hail brother well-met" manner and dress, which
may easily lead careless observers to take the counterfeit for
the true article. I must call the persons in question
"musclemen," as distinguished from muscular Christians; the only
point in common between the two being, that both hold it to be a
good thing to have strong and well-exercised bodies, ready to be
put at the shortest notice to any work of which bodies are
capable, and to do it well. Here all likeness ends; for the
"muscle" man seems to have no belief whatever as to the purposes
for which his body has been given him, except some hazy idea that
it is to go up and down the world with him, belaboring men or
captivating women for his benefit or pleasure, at once the
servant and fomentor of those fierce and brutal passions which he
seems to think it a necessity, and rather a fine thing than
otherwise, to indulge and obey. Whereas, so far as I know, the
least of the muscular Christians has hold of the old chivalrous
and Christian belief, that a man's body is given him to be
trained and brought into subjection, and then used for the
protection of the weak, the advancement of all righteous causes,
and the subduing of the earth which God has given to the children
of men. He does not hold that mere strength or activity are in
themselves worthy of any respect or worship, or that one man is a
bit better than another because he can knock him down, or carry a
bigger sack of potatoes than he. For mere power, whether of body
or intellect, he has (I hope and believe) no reverence whatever,
though, _coeteris paribus_, he would probably himself, as a
matter of taste, prefer the man who can lift a hundred-weight
round his head with his little finger to the man who can
construct a string of perfect Sorites, or expound the doctrine of
"contradictory inconceivables."

The above remarks occur as our hero is marching innocently down
towards his first "town and gown" row, and I should scarcely like
to see him in the middle of it, without protesting that it is a
mistake. I know that he, and other youngsters of his kidney, will
h