regret to a time when shopping was not the burden it has since become. After all, there is something like a return to barbarism in a system which ignores the gains derived from combination, and leaves so much of the distribution to be done by each purchaser for himself. Indeed, as regards the delivery of goods, recourse is usually had to combination in another and less convenient form. Instead of each shopkeeper sending home the goods which he has sold, they are entrusted to some parcels' delivery company, a process often involving delay, and always saddling the buyer with a charge which acts as a prohibitive duty on small purchases. Considerable annoyance is entailed by being thus forced to include every imaginable want in the periodical order, under penalty, in the event of anything being forgotten, of having either to go without it altogether or to pay nearly as much for its carriage as for that of the whole parcel of which it ought to have formed part. There seems no reason why, supposing shops not to be recklessly multiplied, each shop should not be able to send home the goods bought at it at as cheap a rate as a separate delivery company. In this case it will be as easy to distribute the cost over all purchasers in the shape of a percentage on each article sold as to defray it by an ad valorem charge determined by weight or size. The same argument will apply in its degree to most of the services which the Co-operative Stores either refuse to render or render only for a separate charge. If there are many persons to whom it is an object to save money by doing things for themselves instead of paying others to do them there will be many more who will find their time of too much value to be thus employed or who can afford to spare themselves the trouble of thus employing it. In the long run, therefore, it seems probable that retail traders may recover a great part of the position they have undoubtedly lost, or, at all events, ensure themselves against sustaining further loss in the same direction, provided only that they will lay to heart the lessons which the success of Co-operative Stores undoubtedly ought to convey to them. It has been seen that the popularity of the Stores is really due to three things-superior cheapness, absence of pressure, and purity of goods. There is no reason why these advantages should not be given to their customers by retail shopkeepers if they have the wits to see their own interest. The superior cheapness of the Stores is the result partly of their ready money dealings and partly of their not doing as much for their customers as is ordinarily done in shops. So far as it springs from the former cause, it is completely within the reach of every retail trader. He can ensure himself against bad debts, he can save expense in keeping accounts, he can have the immediate use of his money, with all the benefits which this gives him in his character of buyer, by the simple expedient of not giving credit. So far as the cheapness of the Stores comes from their leaving purchasers to do a great deal for themselves, it is either within the reach of every retail trader, or it does not really minister to the popularity of the Stores. For example, the suppression of useless services, or of services of which the cost is out of all proportion to the value given, need not be confined to Co-operative Stores. Under the former head would come excessive calling for orders; under the latter enormous rents paid in order to put the shop within a stone's throw of those who habitually deal at it. Co-operative Stores have accustomed people to send their orders by post, and the result of this change of habit is seen in the increasing practice of dealing with large shops at a distance rather than with smaller shops close at hand. There is no reason why these large shops should not make ordering by post still easier by supplying their customers with printed order lists, such as are usually sent by seedsmen with their catalogues. The amount of each article ordered might then be entered against its name, and the same list with the price affixed might be returned to the customer as his bill. In this way the expense of sending out canvassers would be spared to the shopkeeper and the annoyance of having his servants canvassed would be spared to the customer. An adequate guarantee of the purity of the goods sold is not to be attained without more trouble and arrangement, but it is quite within the reach of shopkeepers if they are willing to act in concert. Supposing that an association of shopkeepers were formed which pledged its members to give a correct description of every article sold, maintained analysts of its own to test any sample offered for examination by a purchaser, and returned the price for any article which failed to stand this test, there would be an absolute practical certainty that no adulteration was practised, and that if inferior qualities were sold, they were sold under a title which proclaimed them to be what they really were. The analysts provided by the association should of course be men of sufficient professional repute to be above all suspicion of wishing to make things pleasant for their employers, and they should be paid well enough to make it worth their while to give prompt attention to the samples submitted to them. By this means there would be as complete an assurance of purity in the case of goods bought from members of the society, as in the case of goods bought at a Co-operative Store. The same object might be attained in other ways-the really essential thing being that shopkeepers should recognise that, without some external test, it is impossible that customers-at all events new customers-should feel as much confidence in the integrity of a dealer who has an interest in selling inferior goods at high prices, as in the integrity of a Co-operative Association which has no interest of the kind. The conclusion of the whole matter is shortly this: If retail traders are ordinarily prudent they have no cause to be alarmed by the rivalry of Co-operative Stores. But if they act with the singular folly of which some of their number have lately been guilty they will find themselves very deservedly going to the wall. The way to hold their own against the Stores is not to indulge in nonsensical denunciations of Civil Service trading, but to set to work to supply goods of equal value, to supply them under more convenient conditions, and to make the additional price charged for them the honest representative of the additional advantages given. Those dealers who will take the trouble to put this combination within the reach of their customers will not find themselves the worse for the existence of any number of Co-operative Associations. 345 Physical Education. Qui studet optatam cursu contingere metam, Abstinuit Venere et Baccho.-HOR. A. P., 412, &c. Folle decet pueros ludere, folle senes.--MART. 1. xiv., Epigr. 47. Ar a time when national safety depended on the superiority of individual muscular exertion, rather than of refined strategics and polemical machinery-when a battle resembled rather a scramble of wild beasts, in which the strongest took the best share of the booty, than an united, organised, and scientific system-institutions tending to a development of the bodily powers began to be recognised among the Greeks as advantageous, if not necessary to their military success. In the poems of Homer we find traces everywhere of that physical prowess which appears to form the exclusive subject of admiration for early civilisation. The panegyric of Achilles, though presenting little attraction to a general of the present day-we refer to the attribute of swift-footed, which so often accompanies the name of that chieftain-was considered an excellent qualification at the time of the siege of Troy. But we are compelled to think that the same poet, when he asserts that racers were sometimes invisible, from their excessive swiftness, is drawing rather from the fertile source of his imagination, than from the presence of an observed fact. That art which the necessity of war had introduced, was afterwards sustained by the love of pleasure and glory. The gymnasts being accustomed to contend naked-a circumstance which is recalled to the reader by their name-in the sight of the whole of Greece, not content with their simple strength of body, began, in addition, to affect the praise of form. To this fact the excellence of Grecian sculpture may in some measure be attributed. In proportion, however, as the glory and the celebrity of the Olympic games increased, their practical utility declined. Men devoted themselves to the training of a particular set of muscles for particular exercises, no longer regarding a general physical improvement, but aiming at the crown of olive for some feat of partial dexterity or strength. With every succeeding Olympiad, men strove more and more not to enable themselves to endure all wants and all temperatures in their varied campaigns, but to perform idle feats in one situation at home. Thus this celebrated festival, of which the lyric poet of Thebes, on whose lips the legend says the bees of Hymettus left their honey, has sung with a magnificence of style and boldness of expression befitting its ancient origin, degenerated at last into a mere show, and thus the Greeks, by mistaking the means for the end, defeated the purposes of this early institution of their forefathers. The history of the Olympic games has a moral, which may still be useful to the gymnasts of a later and more civilised age. It is this: Exercise should be general, not particular, unless for a particular defect. Socrates, in that Republic which nowhere was, nor in all probability will be, said that he would not labour like those who run in the racecourse, that he might make his legs strong, while his shoulders and other parts of his body remained weak, nor only as a pugilist, to make his shoulders strong, not caring for his legs; but so that by exercising all his limbs, all might receive a proportionate increase in agility and strength. The observation may well apply not only to a disproportionate exercise of any part of the body in comparison with the whole, but to a disproportionate exercise of the mind in comparison to the body. Philera of Cos, says an old writer, was very skilful in making hexameters. He was also said to be healthy; but he was so singularly thin, that against damage or injury from a high wind, lest he should be overthrown or carried away by it, he was obliged to fortify his feet by lead. This distressing instance of partial culture may be objected to as apocryphal or a myth; but a walk in the country in the vicinage of either of our university towns, will teach us the same lesson, though in a less startling and incredible manner. Men, in common with most other animals, are furnished with legs; the possession is a fact, but their object is a matter of dispute. To the footman in plush, for instance, they appear to be advertisements whereby he may gain or retain a situation; to the manager of a theatre, on his corps de ballet, likewise as an advertisement whereby he may increase his dramatic revenue; to the surgeon, again, on other people generally, as affording facilities for amputation and increased scientific enjoyment; to the hard-reading university student-by which term we do not intend to represent a class, but an exception-they are means necessary to be employed in taking a "constitutional." A mathematician, who has been studying cubic equations all day, determines on taking a walk to keep himself in health; he is desirous of finding out the true heliocentric latitude of Venus on the 25th of May, 1813, at 30 minutes, 54 seconds past 9 in the morning; he takes one last lingering look at the work he is studying, and, treasuring up the inclination of her orbit to the ecliptic, puts on his hat, and rushes out of his rooms-perhaps oversetting his scout coming upstairs with his tea-things on his way. He walks for three miles, turns, and walks back three miles-he has seen nothing, heard nothing, felt nothing; but he has thought of Venus, and determined that her latitude must be south descending. He has forgotten, however, that the mind requires change of scene as well as the body, and that the corpus sanum, the object of his temporary ambition, is dependent in no slight degree on the sana mens. It may be asserted that gymnastic excellence, considered by itself, is of little use; that the occasions are few on which society requires us to leap over a five-barred gate, or to climb a pole, or to hang with our head downwards. Though this be true, it is apparent to everyone, that health is generally found in conjunction with strength (we except the so-called strength of constitution, a phenomenon of which when found, as it frequently is, in persons of the least perfect health, we can here offer no explanation), and that strength is without doubt increased by muscular exertion. The connection between life and health is too patent to be insisted on. For some other purpose, then, is the leaping-pole necessary than that of avoiding the necessity and delay of clambering over or unlocking gates; it is necessary-we speak generally-for our strength, the prolongation of our health, our existence. Life and health walk hand in hand; health is nothing but integrity of life; disease is nothing but an offence and abbreviation of it. Gymnastic exercise will not under all circumstances be successful, but, cæteris paribus, it will be in creating fine men. By which expression is not to be understood plump or fat men, for that fatness is the result rather of ease than of labour may be gathered from a visit to the cattle show. Theagenes, the Thasian, is reported by Athenæus to have eaten a whole ox in two days, a praise which is also attributed to Milo of Crotona. These men were both protagonists in the gymnasium; but we have no authority for supposing, as we might suppose, considering the amount of their food, that they were unusually distinguished for embonpoint. We have said before that exercise should be general. A game at ball, know to the Greeks under the name of sphæromachy, a game in which Nausicaa with her companions was engaged when disturbed by Ulysses at the riverside, the pila trigonalis of Rome, seems to be admirably calculated for exercising almost the whole order of muscles in the human frame. It would hardly, perhaps, at the present day be considered worthy of a place amongst gymnastic exercises; but that it is an exercise of the greatest advantage there can be little doubt, and more dignity may be imparted to it by mentioning it under other names, as football or cricket, which, says Johnson, is a sport in which the contenders drive a ball with sticks in opposition to each other. This definition would, in fact, apply equally well or better to hockey; but, on reflection, we may perhaps discover, without the aid of the lexicographer, that cricket, our national pastime, of which we are so justly proud, is essentially and primarily a game at ball. Military ardour, combined with a love of their country, has formed our youths into various Rifle Companies, in which the exercises prescribed are advantageous for the same reason, viz., general muscular development, though perhaps to a lesser extent. The sole difference which formerly distinguished medicinal from |