J. F. Campbell Collection > Address to the middle classes upon the subject of gymnastic exercises

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ble would have been captured by his own prisoner.
Many a blow, inflicted with languid intrepidity and
nerveless good-will, would have served, rather to
provoke than to disable, the disturber of the public
peace. Had a collision taken place, I fear that
many of our guardians would have been, not
daunted but overthrown, and have succumbed to
antagonists perhaps inferior in courage, but pos-
sessed of better trained muscles, and sinews more
invigorated by use.
It is a curious fact, that most of the great gene-
rals, who have signalized themselves, not only by
their genius for command, but by their endurance
of privation and fatigue, have been men originally
of feeble organisation, which they have hardened
and invigorated by temperance and toil. Csesar,
who not only excelled all the commanders of his
time in strategical science, but all the legionaries
of his army in patience under hardship, had by
nature a weak constitution, which he strengthened
by the early practice of gymnastics. It may, indeed,
be assumed as an axiom, that a man, naturally deli-
cate but vigorously trained, will surpass in activity
and strength, one vigorously organised but uninured
to exertion. If this be disputed, compare the
Asiatic palanquin bearer with the European trades-
man. The one, with a feminine delicacy of frame,
scales mountains under heavy burdens ; the other,
endowed, perhaps, with the proportions of a giant,
totters oppressed and crushed by his own weight.
There are a nuraberof well-meaning but inconside-