Publisher's Synopsis
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1856 edition. Excerpt: ... A Study in the Bohool House. L ENVOI. NY view of Education must be defective, which does not regard it as extending to the whole na'ture of those who are the subjects of it. The first element of this nature, which presents itself for consideration, is the body. It is the body which challenges the earliest care, -- nay, whose nurture and development wholly engrosses the solicitude of parents in the few first years of life. And though at a later period the higher faculties, which then unfold themselves, demand in right of their superiority, even a more anxious culture, --still the healthfulness of the body is an object of no slight importance throughout life. Man's physical and intellectual nature are so closely intertwined, --their fibres are twisted so inextricably together, --that the mens sana cannot be without the corpus sanum. The Greeks knew this better than ourselves, or at all events recognised it more in their practice: for with them, as is well known, Gymnastics formed an essential branch of Education. The comparatively feeble testimony which our Modern Educational Institutions bear to this truth, is to be found in the fact, that every school has its play-ground. In English Public Schools, this play-ground is not usually devoted to Gymnastics in the limited signification of the term. It is the scene of games rather than of exercises. And we think that in this circumstance there is something peculiarly English, -- a trait of our nationality, which manifests itself in all parts of our social system alike, great and small, The English character is essentially practical: there is inherent in it a profound aversion to mere theory;--"we cling," as it has been well observed * "to the useful, the actual, that which "answers a definite...
