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790. This question, however, I am not careful to answer. Even if it is true that there is a difficulty in providing other and efficient modes of punishment, I should not feel the difficulty to justify the maintenance of modes that are so clearly injurious. But, merely for the sake of giving an answer, I may say that, in the case of girls, experience derived from many of the higher-class schools shows that discipline may be maintained, either without any punishment at all, or else by such kinds as are more nominal than real. The difficulty in the case of boys is no doubt greater, but not, I think, insurmountable. Many kinds of punishment may here be devised which go upon the principle, not of denying muscular exercise, but of enforcing it. Extra drills or other compulsory exercise during play-hours are modes of punishment greatly to be preferred to those involving sedentary confinement, although I do not pretend to insinuate that compulsory exercise in the way of punishment has the same recreative value as voluntary exercise in the way of play. For my own part, I have no hesitation in recommending corporal punishment as on all grounds greatly preferable to the protracted, tedious, heart-sickening, and health-breaking systems which, in the name of humanity, are coming more and more into general use. But, however great the difficulty of devising or substituting other modes of punishment may be, I feel sure there can be no reasonable doubt that the modes which are at present so largely in fashion ought to be universally abolished.

The above remarks of course apply almost exclusively to boys' schools; and, looking to boys' schools as a whole, but little more remains to be said of them in connection with recreation. The John Bull spirit of this country is in favor of allowing schoolboys to play the hardy and vigorous games which require all the muscles to be brought into active service. The case, however, is widely different in girls' schools; so, before concluding, I should like to add a few words with special reference to them.

School-life is the time when, most of all, healthful recreation is needed. It is then that the organism, being in a state of active growth, most requires the purifying and strengthening influences of muscular exercise to be in frequent operation; and the development which the organism, during the years of its growth, receives, is carried through its life as an unalterable possession. Yet in the majority of girls' schools how miserable is the provision that is made for securing this development! Even in our higher-class schools the whole mechanism of their discipline seems to be devised with the view of stemming the healthful flow of natural joyousness by the barriers of tedious monotony. On all sides a schoolgirl is shut up in a very prison-house of decorum; every healthful amusement is denied her as "unladylike"; she is imperatively taught to curb her youthful spirits in so far as these may sometimes be able to struggle above the weight of a mistaken discipline; she is nurtured during her growth on the