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By Root 16270 0

one who reflects—every one who knows anything, knows, and by experience, how intimate a connexion there exists between body and mind — how invariably the healthy or sickly temperament of the one influences that of the other; that when the body is strong, healthy, and active, so is the mind cheerful and elastic, and that when the former is sickly and diseased, so is the latter languid and depressed. The ancient Greeks and Romans understood this; and their education was accordingly directed to the development, not only of the mental, but also of the corporeal powers; and this corporeal branch of education was termed Gymnastics.

[[The next three paragraphs are taken from the London Mirror, May 20, 1826, 7:306:]]

The earliest account we have of gymnastic exercises is in Homer’s Iliad, book the twenty-third”, in which are described the games celebrated at the funeral of Patroclus. The Grecian gymnastics consisted of chariot racing, boxing, wrestling, foot races, drawing the bow, hurling javelins, etc,

Plato states, that one Herodicus introduced this art into physic; and Hippocrates, who lived at a later period, recommended it ; but as physicians did not adopt all the exercises of the gymnastic art, it came to be divided between them and the teachers of warlike and athletic exercises, who kept schools for the purpose.

From Greece, gymnastic exercises were imported into the Roman empire, where the young men were exercised in athletic sports in a large plain, by the side of the Tiber, called the Campus Martins, or in public schools, termed Gymnasia, or Palestrae ; but as the amusements did not differ materially from those in Greece, it is unnecessary to describe them.

[[This paragraph is taken directly from American Journal of Education, 1826, 1:502:]]

In the middle ages, when education got into the hands, and was at the sole disposal of the monks, it is not surprising that Gymnastics altogether disappeared. The lords of the soil indeed, knights and princes, contended at their splendid tilts and tournaments ; but the mass of the people were degraded and enslaved, the more effectually to administer to the pleasures and the pride of their oppressors. This age of chivalry, as it was termed, passed away however in succeeding ages ; even these knightly games became extinct, and Gymnastics, gradually losing ground, were at length reduced to the very name, known possibly to some musty philosophers who might have stumbled on it in their insane, because indiscriminate, enthusiasm for whatever might bear the stamp of barbarism or antiquity.

[[As implied by the reference to Joseph Strutt, the next two paragraphs, including the quoted poems, are taken from Sports and Pastimes:]]

The nearest approach to the true exercises of the Gymnasium proper, of which we find an account in any of the British records, is to be met with in the “Sports and Pastimes” of Joseph Strutt.

”Hopping-matches for prizes,” he says, “were occasionally made in the sixteenth century, as we learn from John Heywoode, the epigrammatist. In his Proverbs are the following lines :

Where wooers hoppe in and out, long time may bring

Him that hoppeth best, at last to have the ring —

— I hoppying without for a ringe of a rushe.

And again, in a play called the four P’s, by the same author, one of the characters is directed to ‘hop upon one foot ;’ and another says —

Here were a hopper to hop for the ring.”

Mention is also made of the Ladder-Dance — “so called because the performer stands upon a ladder, which he shifts from place to place, and ascends or descends, without losing the equilibrium, or permitting it to fall.”

In regard to those mere feats of agility and dexterity, for which our tumblers, rope-dancers, and circus-riders are now famous, we meet with enough to prove that they have been at all times practised in England, and indeed throughout Europe, and many other portions, both of the civilized and uncivilized world ; but the practice of gymnastic exercises, as a system, for the useful purposes of invigorating the body and imparting elasticity to the mind,