bear precocious fruit; let them pass through all the phases of their development.

The only study we would allow from three years old till seven, would be the study of languages; not as it is generally understood, but by placing with children intelligent persons belonging to foreign nations. Let an English child have a French or German nurse; a French child an English or German nurse. Children may thus early acquire a knowledge of foreign languages, without excess of mental exertion. Later on, the grammar may be advantageously taught, when children are able to understand it. We knew a child, at the early age of seven, speak English, French, and German; yet he had enjoyed full liberty, and had never opened a book; he was not a Cicero in each of these languages, but knew more than many boys of fifteen, who had been fatigued with study.

Let there be no books, no excess of mental exertion, no writing or drawing, no premature intellectual development. Before we make prodigies, let us strive to have children that may become useful members of society.

If care must be taken not to fatigue the brain, the digestive functions also require attention. We have remarked that the brain and stomach are most liable to be affected, during the first and second dentition. The stomach should never be overloaded; the consequences of indigestion

may prove fatal; the bowels must be kept in good order, not by the use of continued medicine, but by good and wholesome varied food.

The child having reached its seventh year, and there being nothing to fear from well directed 'studies, we may continue to give rules, sanctioned by experience, and consistent with the laws of physical education.

CHAP. XXI.

Organic Structure.

WE have hitherto made abstraction of the influence of motion, or the power of action, which have, nevertheless, so strong an influence on the human economy. We have only considered the human being in a negative manner: we have studied passive life, and it now remains for us to consider active and spontaneous life. Among the human movements, some are internal, continual, and free from the empire of the will; others are subjected to it, and to these latter we allude.

The principal organs of voluntary motion are bones and muscles; some are levers and supporters; others are links and ties.

The osseous parts of the body are admirably disposed; the head is supported by a pyramidal column, on which it moves; this column is composed of four and twenty vertebræ, united by ligaments and elastic cartilages. The spinal column is the centre, and support of all movements: owing to its articulations, it bends and straightens, or else is kept in equilibrium by the effect of the ligaments, cartilages and muscles; it forms a powerful lever, elastic and moveable, or firm and steady.

The spine is the flexible axis supporting all the organs of the body. The vertebral column is convex near the neck and loins, concave at the back; sometimes slightly inclined, and convex to the left. The moveable bones, serving as levers, are always placed between two opposite muscular powers, which give to this order of muscles the name of antagonist, and that of congenerous to all those tending to produce the same motion. Thus it will not suffice in movement to conquer the resistance of any given object; we must also conquer the resistance of the antagonist muscles.

This antagonism of the muscles is seldom perfect, and it is sometimes because the equilibrium is destroyed, that the osseous axis bends more on one side than the other, and that the deviation is caused. The human frame has a tendency to bend, not on the side of the weak muscles, but on the side of the strong ones.

The muscles have sometimes various functions to perform: thus the glottis is at times congenerous, at others antagonist to the respiratory muscles; but, generally speaking, the action of one muscle does not cause the relaxation of another muscle, but forms the neutralization in the equilibrium of the organs. All muscles are both antagonist and congenerous.

In infancy there is but little difference between boys and girls; but in girls, often, of twelve years old, the features are more strongly

delineated, the chest expands, the muscles are weak and thin: the spine lengthens till the time of puberty; but this change established, bones increase in breadth, and acquire a greater degree of solidity. The sternum forming the cavity of the chest, is one of the bones latest consolidated.

Till eighteen to twenty in woman, and twenty to twenty-four in man, the work of ossification is not completed. It is especially on the length and not the thickness of the muscles, that the energy of nutrition acts. Girls, though precocious in physical development, do not depart from the primitive delicacy of childhood; all the tissues are impregnated with a great quantity of fluids, which render them less firm, and the bones and muscles do not acquire the same strength and solidity as those of men.

In all ages of life the physical constitution of females is more delicate; if, therefore, nature has granted different attributes to females, and we love woman for her feminine qualities, grace, and mildness, let girls not be subjected to the rough and violent exercises which contribute to the majestic development of man. Let us take Praxiteles or Canova's Venus for models, and not Minerva of Lacedemonia, with a helmet and spear!

But man is not only composed of muscles and bones, there are other organs requiring physical education. To increase the power, and