Page:Once a Week, Series 1, Volume II Dec 1859 to June 1860.pdf/407

 394 Nor is this all. With—and it may be in consequence of—these great changes, has arisen an ardent desire for knowledge, to which all classes alike yield. So that, in addition to a vast and daily-growing increase of mental labour for business purposes, we tax the mind with the acquirement of that information which we need to elevate us intellectually to the level of the age. And this tax is, in almost every case, levied upon our already reduced physical recreation. Mechanics Institutions, Young Men’s Associations, Scientific Clubs, all admirable in their way, may yet be injurious to the youth of our towns in inducing them to neglect the body’s weal, and so throw out the economy of that system the regularity of which depends so entirely upon the perfect well-being of all its component parts.

It may be thought that our remarks upon the decay of physical pastime will not apply to the rural population of our land, whose daily manual labour must sufficiently exercise their muscles and develop their physical growth. But, fortunately for that self-defensive movement which is stirring us so deeply, the lack of physical pastime is just as strongly felt in country as in town. Any one with the least experience of rural England must often have regretted that the honest healthful play, to which we have before alluded, has been allowed to die away.

Stroll through any of its villages on a summer-evening and take note of the group of men and youths you may see lounging round the pump in awkward contortions of ease, or through the red-curtained windows of the public-house, smoking, drinking, gambling, breathing air morally and physically impure; and say whether they had not better be upon the village-green wrestling, leaping, quarrelling if they will. Ask the drill-sergeant or the man-of-war’s boatswain, whether he draws his better and more promising lads from the mural or rural districts of England, and we shall be surprised indeed if his answer does not upset your conception of the muscular strength and physical superiority of the ploughmen of merry England over their “Town” brethren.

Nor must it be thought that, after the hard labour of the day, the agricultural workman needs absolute repose of the muscles. Physical labour by no means incapacitates for physical play. From the study of the most abstruse science the student turns for relief, and with redoubled zest, to the delights of poetry, although they, too, are mental, and call into action similar organs. So the wearied ploughman would gain rather than lose strength and freshness by the physical pastime of the evening, which would rouse into action qualities of hardihood, emulation, and endurance, seldom required in the daily labour of his life.

Concluding then that such a pastime for peace, which should be part of and fitly tend to a sterner exercise for war, would be beneficial to the physical welfare of all of us, of every class and age, but few words are necessary to convince our readers of its national importance. The present defensive movement, to become of real and lasting benefit to the state, must permeate through every class, and settle, finally, into a recognised pastime of peace. A few months or years may see the clouds, that at present appear to threaten our national safety, broken and dispersed, and an almost absolute security restored to us. When such a time comes happily, if the nation does not disarm as rapidly and completely as she is now arming, it will, we firmly believe, be owing mainly to her having, in the meanwhile, made of the rifle a national toy, and of martial exercise a national pastime.

Such play, with such a meaning in it, has never been long neglected in our own or any other land, without consequent peril. The wisest men of old knew its importance, and not only advocated but practised it.

King David thought it worth his leisure while to instruct the youth of Judah in the use of their national weapon—the bow; in free Greece the olive-crown of the athlete and the poet were alike honoured, and Pindar commemorated the triumph of mind and of valour with equal impartiality. As it was a bad day for Grecian independence, when its youth neglected the gymnasia for the barbers’ shops and the baths, and began to be critical about the cut and folds of their white toga,—so it was a bad day for Saxon England when her sons left their martial sport for the revel and excess in franklins’ halls or village ale-houses. Old chronicles are rife with remonstrances and anxious fears upon this point, and sure enough they were but too literally verified when the Saxon went down before the Norman shaveling on Hastings’ field.

It may not be amiss for us to remember that the Anglo-Saxon rallied from revel and ale-house to meet with that defeat, and to struggle for two hundred years before he could force upon his victors the language and institutions of his race. Again, let us compare old Roger Ascham’s definition of an English youth with that of Etherege, remembering the while that the brave schoolmaster’s lads grew to be the men who laughed at the Spaniard’s beard and blew his vaunted Armada to the winds, while the latter stood idly by to see England become the pensioner of France. Says mincing Etherege, “My complete gentleman should dress well, dance well, fence well, have a genius for love-letters and an agreeable voice for a chamber:” outspeaks the brave old dominie, my English lad shall “ride comely, run fair at tilt and ring, play at all weapons, shoot fair in bow or sure in gun; vault lustily; run, leap, wrestle, swim.” He will have him able to “dance comely, sing, play of instruments cunningly;” but it must be only when he can “hawk, hunt, play at tennis, and all pastimes generally which be joined with labour, and so contain in them some fit exercise for war.”

We come now to consider how best this pastime of peace and exercise for war can be combined and cultivated among us. If, as we have before said, the volunteer movement is to be anything more than a temporary expedient, the pastime of our lads should be so directed that it should lead them naturally to, and fit them effectively for, the use of arms in later life. With our public schoolboys such a pastime would soon become most popular. The youthful population of town and country would be more difficult of access, but if nothing dies quicker, nothing at least spreads faster than a