enough to hear the publicans, in their discontent with the Volunteer movement. Looking down into the valley, in these summer evenings, I see there the volunteers marching, or going through their evolutions; and the village population gathering to hear their music, or to watch their shooting. Meantime, the publicans are lounging at their own doors, or gossiping at a neighbour’s, complaining of the change of times since the notion of volunteering put it into people’s heads to spend their evenings in the open air, instead of the sociable inn parlour.
Ten years ago, we were at about the lowest point; or it looked as if we were. There was already some talk of “Muscular Christianity”: society was learning the importance of keeping the skin clean: and the cramming of children was widely denounced. But when the idea of invasion was revived, we were struck with terror at the spectacle of our middle-class young men, with their generally shambling gait, their mean carriage, their unpractised eye and hand, and their ignorance of the use of all weapons. Such bodily exercises as we had were under discredit, because they were ill managed. A man here had hurt himself by over-exertion at cricket; a boy there had been ill ever since a too hard race at school: one had strained his shoulder; another had exhausted his chest; a third had wrung his back, or some useful muscle or other. There was mischief in our exercises and in our deficiency of such exercises. The hearts and souls of Englishmen were all right towards their homes and the enemy; but what could we say of their right arms? The Volunteer movement retrieved us: and now it must be one of the most striking incidents to our Exhibition visitors that the physical bearing of Englishmen has become ennobled since 1851. Our young men have now a manly carriage of the head and limbs, a firm tread, an agile gait, and the proper use of their limbs and senses.
As a natural result of the change, it is extending to the children of the country. There is a deep and wide stir to get drill and gymnastic exercises introduced into our schools for all ranks and orders of children. Nobody wants to interfere with the good old games. The games are sacred; but the boys may as well be qualified to play them without injury by a proper training in the use of their limbs. We have seen Lord Elcho’s motion, on behalf of “systematised gymnastic training” respectfully discussed in the Commons; and we have heard Lord Clarendon tell Lord Stratheden in the other House that the Public Schools Commission will inquire into the practice of drill, and the use of the playgrounds. We have seen how Lord Palmerston was startled by the facts exhibited to him by a deputation of Health officers, about the ill health and mortality caused in schools by want of air and exercise, and about the reduction of the death-rate wherever such mistakes were repaired. We have learned from that deputation that in large schools where the children study half time, and are employed in industrial occupation, and subjected to military drill, the sickness and mortality have been reduced to one-ninth of what they were before. We have seen the London school-teachers meeting to hear Dr. Roth lecture on the physical part of the education they were bound to administer, and have learned from that lecture that whole classes of what are called “children’s diseases” have been got rid of where the body was properly trained. We learn that school-keeping is rendered so much easier wherever drill and systematic exercises are established, that the teachers cannot now conceive how they should get on without them. Not only are the children bright and cheerful, but they are obedient to command, orderly, punctual, apt, wide awake, neat in appearance, and self-respecting in manners. Finally, we have seen the spirited lads from our four great public schools shooting at Wimbledon, and honoured at the Crystal Palace, among cheers from a vast multitude of citizens and their wives, who will henceforth need no convincing of the benefit of military drill and exercise.
The only question in most minds is about the expense. The answer is so satisfactory that, if that be all, there is certainly “a good time coming” for our young generation: for the good economy of a due training of the body may be proved in many ways.
The expense is exceedingly small, to begin with. In our national schools, the drill,—all that is necessary of it,—may be given at the cost of a penny a head, per week. It is pointed out that the saving in shoe-leather would more than cover this in each case. People who learn how to stand and walk properly, cease to wear their shoes down on one side, or at the heel. Then, there are the trowsers. Most of us know some clumsy fellow who kicks his ancles, and who so shambles in his gait as to have all the mud or dust that he can kick up hanging about his trowsers. Another man comes out of the very same path without a speck above his shoe-soles. These savings in dress would cover much instruction in the use of the limbs, and in the art of defence. Perhaps, in fairness, we should set against some of this saving the increased quantity of material required for coat and waistcoat, from the expansion of the chest. In a few weeks under Mr. McLaren, the pupils find that their garments will not meet by many inches: so there must be new clothes, or letting out; and some good many more inches of cloth required in the making. This cost, again, must be more than compensated by the absence of doctors’ and druggists’ charges. An expanded chest, a brisk and true circulation, and a calm nervous system, save many doctors’ bills. Speaking seriously, the reduction of juvenile disease and mortality by nine-tenths alters the whole life of the working-class in which the change occurs. Prosperity comes to the homes where all the members are lively, and active, and strong, fit to make their way in life; and the lowest misery is found where sickness and death are at once the effect and the cause of poverty, and where the survivors struggle in vain under their languor and depression. In the competition of life, they must go to the wall. If, as Mr. Chadwick tells us, fifty out of sixty of the doomed of that class may be saved and reinstated by sensible physical training, is not the economy,—social and individual,—so great as to become sublime?
