LORD STANLEY ON EXERCISE.
SEDENTARY men owe Lord Stanley a piece of plate, some thing bigger than the silver toothpick which Elliston is said to have described by that meaningless phrase. He has struck a hard blow at a superstition which, harmless to the rest of man- kind, inflicts upon them severe and wholly unmerited suffering. He has ventured, being a possible Premier, and the heir to Knows- ley, and a passed Cabinet Minister, and a man of considerable independence of thought, to affirm publicly that a " constitu- tional," a walk undertaken for the sake of a walk, is not an. "entertaining" mode of passing one's time. He even ventures, fearless of the comments which will be passed on him by reading men of Cambridge, by studious persons over forty, by the majority of old women, by all wives of fat husbands, and by the entire shopocracy, to declare that it is one of the least entertaining occu- pations that man has ever devised. We feel inclined to recant every criticism we have ever passed upon Lord Stanley, on his want of imagination, on his tendency to believe " hard" sense the equiva- lent of originality, on his wonderful capacity for uniting all that is unpleasant in the opinions of Manchester with all that is harsh- in the views of Castle Hedingham, and to welcome the hope of. Mr. Adderley and Mr. Robert Lowe as a genuine philanthropist- After all, the man who directly reduces the sum of human suffering is the man for the nineteenth century, and Lord Stanley has reduced it very much indeed. He has given an opinion which tells, which is quotable, which can be repeated without a volume of ex- planation as to the position of its author, against a belief which has inflicted if not as much as misery as Calvinism, at least as much as any one not having a distinctly religious origin. Of all minor penances that of walking when one has nothing to walk for and does not want to walk is the greatest, and henceforward one may sit quiet or take a cab without fear of the reproach of suicide. The " constitutional " is officially condemned by the most sensible man in England, and the average Englishman may pluck up courage to tell his wife that he is inclined to think it illegal, and is he a respectable citizen to overtly break the law? Pending the consequent discussion he can sit still, and even that, hope still surviving, is a daily and inestimable gain.
Seriously, Lord Stanley's illustration of the value of gymnastics. as a national amusement was extremely happy. He hit on the precise class who want that addition to their means of enjoyment, and the precise reason for wanting it. The practice of gymnastics is not wanted for the people of England as it is wanted, for example, for the people of Germany, because one-half of the people of England enjoy much better opportunities of cultivating the body than the gymnasium can afford, but it is wanted for the other half, for the men, a daily increasing number, who papa their youth and manhood, and if unfortunate their old age, without permanently quitting the pavement. That is the fact which the social politicians of Great Britain have to accept, and have not yet accepted. One of the conditions of the old civilization, its muni- cipal character, has returned upon us, and life must henceforward be organized upon that datum. One-half of the British popula- tion lives in paved towns. Probably two-thirds of the total con- stituency, the ultimate governing class which, if excited, can con- trol throne, peers, and press, and every other political force save only that of ideas, lives habitually within the range of the gaslights, lives so habitually that, as an accomplished man said recently to the writer, he " had forgotten how dark it could be on a coun- try road." The rapid increase of manufacturing wealth, and therefore of chances connected with manufacturing wealth, the decrease in the importance of agriculture, the increasing em- ployment of machinery, and above all, the spread of that kind of education which makes men gregarious, eager to cease to stand alone, are all accelerating the process, until we believe within twenty years a heavy majority of Englishmen will be domiciled in cities. They must, if England is to retain its national character, be kept healthy, and healthy in respects not greatly affected by the mere fact of association. Those accidents of locality now so fatal to longevity will, we believe, slow as the reform sometimes seems, be very speedily corrected. The main truth that sewage in a town is " matter in the wrong place" has gone deep into the national wind, and within this generation English
cities will probably be as sweet as hay-fields, as free from miasma ast Cumberland uplands. We should not be surprised even to see a slight recoil on the other side, to hear of contrivances distinctly oppressive, of regulations very hostile to human freedom, of the growth of an opinion tending to place an immoral value upon human life. There are higher ends than keeping alive, though we, with our feeble diatribes about the slaughter of the American campaigns, and the horrors of war, and the iniquity of defending freedom, seem in some danger of temporarily forgetting that fact The cities will get healthy enough, and all• power being already in the hands of those who live in- them, they will in no long time become pleasant enough to their inhabitants. Pure water, and clear artificial lights, and wide parks, and open squares, and shaded streets, and picturesque architecture are only questions of time, a free and inventive race which dwells in cities being quite certain to make those cities habitable for itself. The point is the condition of the citizens, and upon this we own to some grave misgivings.
There is, we believe, great danger, not so much of a deterioration of our race as of a change in it, which we none of us wish to see. The fear of actual deterioration is, we believe, exaggerated, as exagger- ated as the terms in which some writers describe the physical con- dition of the lower classes of townsmen in Manchester, Liverpool, or London. Even now the most dangerous antagonist an English gentleman can have in a row, the best support in a hard cam- paign, is a London costermonger, and one element in the condition of the city workman is very frequently forgotten. He has to work, and work daily, and work is the second best form of athletic training. Long before serious injury has been inflicted we shall have prevented child labour, and modified youthful labour, and abolished the injurious forms of female labour, and reduced the total number of hours, and made all the conditions of wages, food, and lodging more favourable to longevity. But there will remain something to be done, and it is this which Lord Stanley advises the great cities to do. We have not only to keep the lungs free and the stomach filled with good food, but to do something much more difficult, restore tone to the nerves, reduce the over-excitable, sensitive, eager Englishman of the cities to the ruminant placidity which characterizes him in the country. It is as needful, if we would see men attain the fulness of corporeal development, to educate the body as to train the mind in order to secure a corresponding growth of intellect, and we do not as a nation train the body. The upper class does, because it has recognized the fact that the body is one great medium or vehicle of pleasure, that a weak man cannot enjoy himself as-well as a strong one. The working class does because strength means wages, and because it has, owing to English social arrangements, a profound horror of sickness, which as education creates pre- vision is becoming one of the great miseries of English lower- class-life. But the middle class does not. It is very much occu- pied and has no time, is cooped up in cities and has no space, is Calvinistic and has no inclination. Speculatively it inclines to think the body, which God made as much as the soul, a work of the devil, while practically it is of opinion that eating is the only pleasure attainable without interference with business. As the pressure on the young increases, and they are hurled into life at seventeen instead of twenty, and the need of instruction is more felt, and the prizes are reserved for knowledge, the indisposi- tion to train the body increases till we run some risk of becoming a nation well built, very healthy, and with great possibilities of strength, but unhinged, over-nervous, and incapable of, because unaccustomed to, long-continued exertion. That is the case already with the sons of the professional class and the children of small shopkeepers, and it will be the case with more. It must be corrected, if we do not want to see a positive decline in the total amount of the national energy, and the only remedy is to apply to the body the system we have applied to the mind, regu- larly discipline it, and make both lives artificial instead of one. The gymnasium may be a poor substitute for a natural life, just as instruction is a poor substitute for the habit of affairs, or French lessons for the habit of talking French, but it supplies a great want, and may be made with care to fill the place of more natural training. If made so interesting that it is frequented willingly, as is we believe the case in Edinburgh, and is beginning
to be the case in Liverpool, it may fill theplace completely on every point but one. Occupation which is dreary is never, comparatively speaking, beneficial, as any Londoner may ascertain by taking a sharp stroll in and about Islington or Clerkenwell, and a gymnasium is apt to be very dreary. If training can only be made interesting, brought by rivalry and admiration into something of that relation to daily life which it held in the Pagan world, if it
ceases to be an exercise only and becomes an amusement also, this difficulty will disappear, and there will remain the single one of age. Young men on the Continent use the training school a little too late. For the true citizen, the lad who lives in streets, and works at the desk, and expects to win the game of life without strong daily labour, seventeen is the latest age at which the practice should commence. It is then that the chest needs expansion, the muscles strengthen i ngrand therwhole body that nervous tonic whichphysicians try to supply with drugs, and the lad himself by varying his life, often.aimlesaly, sometimes evilly. To such lads- the use of a good gymnasium for five hours a week means the difference between health and rickettiness, and it is this class, as well as full-grown clerks and shopmen, which in the next public effort should be considered. Liverpool has set a good example, but Liverpool will want ten such gymnasia, and every town in England with more than ten thousand inhabitants should follow the example of the great port. We trust if Mr. Rogers succeeds in his educational project, and he is pretty certain of success, having all the facts on his side, most of the arguments, and the body of the ten-pounders, he will take the lead in the movement in the City, and once fairly set in London the example will be followed in places which need it even more, till we may yet reach the ultimate ideal, a gymnasium in every great parish, an opinion which shall condemn non-member- ship as effeminate, and a belief in physical training as widely dif- fused as the belief in education is beginning to be. The best peculiarity of Greek civilization will then be linked into the Christian system, and as a minor but appreciable advantage, muscular Christianity, having fulfilled its task, will be relegated to that limbo of useful crotchets to which it really belongs.
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