own health, and are therefore useful as warnings rather than examples. The first real book of gymnastics printed in this country, so far as we know, was the work of the veteran Salzmann, translated and published in Philadelphia, in 1802, and sometimes to be met with in libraries,—an odd, desultory book, with many good reasonings and suggestions, and quaint pictures of youths exercising in the old German costume. Like Dr. Follen’s gymnasium, at Cambridge, it was probably transplanted too early, and produced no effect. Next came, in 1836, the book which is still, after twenty years, the standard, so far as it goes,—Walker’s “Manly Exercises,”—a thoroughly English book, and needing adaptation to our habits, but full of manly vigor, and containing good and copious directions for skating, swimming, boating, and horsemanship. The only later general treatise worth naming is Dr. Trail’s recently published “Family Gymnasium,”—a good book, yet not good enough. On gymnastics proper it contains scarcely anything; and the essays on rowing, riding, and skating are so meagre, that they might almost as well have been omitted, though that on swimming is excellent. The main body of the book is devoted to the subject of calisthenics, and especially to Ling’s system; all this is valuable for its novelty, although we cannot imagine how a system so tediously elaborate and so little interesting can ever be made very useful for American pupils. Miss Beecher has an excellent essay on calisthenics, with very useful figures, at the end of her “Physiology.” And on proper gymnastic exercises there is a little book so full and admirable, that it atones for the defects of all the others,—“Paul Preston’s Gymnastics,”—nominally a child’s book, but so spirited and graphic, and entering so admirably into the whole extent of the subject, that it ought to be reprinted and find ten thousand readers.
In our own remarks, we have purposely confined ourselves to those physical exercises which partake most of the character of sports. Field-sports alone we have omitted, because these are so often discussed by abler hands. Mechanical and horticultural labors lie out of our present province. So do the walks and labors of the artist and the man of science. The out-door study of natural history alone is a vast field, even yet very little entered upon. In how many American towns or villages are to he found local collections of natural objects, such as every large town in Europe affords, and without which the foundations of thorough knowledge cannot be laid? We can scarcely point to any. We have innumerable fragmentary and aimless “Museums,”—collections of South-Sea shells in inland villages, and of aboriginal remains in seaport towns,—mere curiosity-shops, which no man confers any real benefit by collecting; while the most ignorant person may be a true benefactor to science by forming a cabinet, however scanty, of the animal and vegetable productions of his own township. We have often heard Professor Agassiz lament this waste of energy, and we would urge upon all our readers to do their share to remedy the defect, while they invigorate their bodies by the exercise which the effort will give, and the joyous open-air life into which it will take them.
For, after all, the secret charm of all these sports and studies is simply this, —that they bring us into more familiar intercourse with Nature. They give us that vitam sub divo in which the Roman exulted,—those out-door days, which, say the Arabs, are not to be reckoned in the length of life. Nay, to a true lover of the open air, night beneath its curtain is as beautiful as day. We personally have camped out under a variety of auspices,—before a fire of pine logs in the forests of Maine, beside a blaze of faya-boughs on the steep side of a foreign volcano, and beside no fire at all, (except a possible one of Sharp’s rifles,) in that domestic volcano, Kansas; and every such re-
