years to run under the feet of cab-horses whenever they can, I know
not how they would learn to use their limbs with agility.

Now there is no real difficulty about teaching drill and the simpler
kinds of gymnastics. It is done admirably well, for example, in the
North Surrey Union schools; and a year or two ago, when I had an
opportunity of inspecting these schools, I was greatly struck with
the effect of such training upon the poor little waifs and strays of
humanity, mostly picked out of the gutter, who are being made into
cleanly, healthy, and useful members of society in that excellent
institution.

Whatever doubts people may entertain about the efficacy of natural
selection, there can be none about artificial selection; and the
breeder who should attempt to make, or keep up, a fine stock of pigs,
or sheep, under the conditions to which the children of the poor
are exposed, would be the laughing-stock even of the bucolic mind.
Parliament has already done something in this direction, by declining
to be an accomplice in the asphyxiation of school children. It refuses
to make any grant to a school in which the cubical contents of the
school-room are inadequate to allow of proper respiration. I should
like to see it make another step in the same direction, and either
refuse to give a grant to a school in which physical training is not
a part of the programme, or, at any rate, offer to pay upon such
training. If something of the kind is not done, the English physique,
which has been, and is still, on the whole, a grand one, will become
as extinct as the dodo, in the great towns.

And then the moral and intellectual effect of drill, as an
introduction to, and aid of, all other sorts of training, must not be