The Complete Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Edgar Allan Poe [811]
[[This paragraph is taken directly from the London Mirror, May 20, 1826, 7:306:]]
It was in Denmark that these exercises were first considered in a national point of view ; and in 1803 the number of gymnastic establishments in that country had amounted to fourteen, in which three thousand young men were educated. Indeed, on the continent generally, the system spread.
[[The next three paragraphs are taken directly from American Journal of Education, 1826, 1:503:]]
In many towns of Germany and Switzerland, Gymnasia were established. The youth, and even grown men, soon derived more pleasure from exercises which fortified, than from pleasures which paralized, the powers of their bodies. By the consciousness of increased vigor, the mind, too, became power fully excited, and strove for equal perfection ; and the constant ambition of every pupil was to verify in his own instance, the truth of the adage, “Mens sana in corpore sana — A sound mind in a healthy body.” Even the naturally indolent were irresistibly carried away by the zeal of their comrades ; persons, diseased and weakly, recovered their health, for the restoration of which these exercises were possibly the only effectual remedy. The certificates of physicians wherever Gymnastics were introduced, concurred as to their healthful tendency, nor were the highest testimonials from parents and teachers found wanting. Indeed, all young men who cultivated them, were acknowledged to have improved in health and morals, and to have acquired an open, free, and graceful deportment. For many years past, Gymnastics have been introduced into England, and have met with decided success. They have been patronized by the government — have been adopted in the army ; in the Royal Military, and Naval Schools; besides the Charter-house, and many private establishments. Private Gymnasia, too, have also appeared in various parts of the metropolis, and received considerable encouragement. But in order to render Gymnastics generally beneficial, and to secure to them a permanent and a national basis, a Public Gymnasium was at length established in several parts of London and the environs, for the admission of all persons of character and respectability, and on terms as nearly as possible proportioned to their pecuniary abilities. Its conduct and regulation were placed under the management of a society, formed by their own body.
That such institutions are desirable in large cities, will be obvious to all who reflect on the impossibility of persons whose employments are sedentary, attaining, after the confinement and anxiety of the day, a requisite portion of healthful exercise and excitement to recruit and exhilarate the spirit, and restore the tone of languid nature. This object, it will be admitted, is not accomplished by the dull, monotonous, and even the pernicious practice of listlessly strolling about the streets without a definite or a useful motive; still less, by dissipating the remnant of their already abused faculties in the unhallowed atmosphere of the tavern or the club. To the clerk, this course will but accelerate the mischief arising from eight or ten hours’ “dry drudgery at the desk’s dead wood ;” to the artizan it is not calculated to ensure peaceful slumbers, and to enable him to meet the duties of the morrow “with nerves new-braced and spirits cheered.”
In hypochnndriacal, and all other melancholy disorders, people are too apt to acquire the notion, that mind alone is concerned ; whereas, the body will usually be found to own at least an equal share, if not indeed the original, of the evil. There is a mutual re-action between them, and by lessening it on one