ill; and I am afraid that a great deal of illness has been from
time to time contracted in certain school-rooms, simply through
this one cause of enforced silence. Some cause or other there
must be for the amount of ill-health and weakliness which prevails
especially among girls of the middle classes in towns, who have
not, poor things, the opportunities which richer girls have, of
keeping themselves in strong health by riding, skating, archery,--
that last quite an admirable exercise for the chest and lungs, and
far preferable to croquet, which involves too much unwholesome
stooping.--Even a game of ball, if milliners and shop-girls had
room to indulge in one after their sedentary work, might bring
fresh spirits to many a heart, and fresh colour to many a cheek.

I spoke just now of the Greeks. I suppose you will all allow that
the Greeks were, as far as we know, the most beautiful race which
the world ever saw. Every educated man knows that they were also
the cleverest of all races; and, next to his Bible, thanks, God
for Greek literature.

Now, these people had made physical as well as intellectual
education a science as well as a study. Their women practised
graceful, and in some cases even athletic, exercises. They
developed, by a free and healthy life, those figures which remain
everlasting and unapproachable models of human beauty: but--to
come to my third point--they wore no stays. The first mention of
stays that I have ever found is in the letters of dear old
Synesius, Bishop of Cyrene, on the Greek coast of Africa, about
four hundred years after the Christian era. He tells us how, when
he was shipwrecked on a remote part of the coast, and he and the
rest of the passengers were starving on cockles and limpets, there