f the upper
classes lead secluded and unhealthy lives, and hence their physical
condition is not superior to our own. In the Northern nations, women of
refinement do more to emulate the active habits of the peasantry,--only
substituting out-door relaxations for out-door toil,--and so they share
their health. This is especially the case in England, which accordingly
seems to furnish the representative types of vigorous womanhood.

"The nervous system of the female sex in England seems to be of a much
stronger mould than that of other nations," says Dr. Merei, a medical
practitioner of English and Continental experience. "They bear a degree
of irritation in their systems, without the issue of fits, which in
other races is not so easily tolerated." So Professor Tyndall, watching
female pedestrianism among the Alps, exults in his countrywomen:--"The
contrast in regard to energy between the maidens of the British Isles
and those of the Continent and of America is astonishing." When Catlin's
Indians first walked the streets of London, they reported with wonder
that they had seen many handsome squaws holding to the arms of men, "and
they did not look sick either";--a remark which no complimentary savage
was ever heard to make in any Cisatlantic metropolis.

There is undoubtedly an impression in this country that the English
vigor is bought at some sacrifice,--that it implies a nervous
organization less fine and artistic, features and limbs more rudely
moulded, and something more coarse and peasant-like in the whole average
texture. Making all due allowance for national vanity, it is yet easy to
see that superiority may be had more cheaply by lowering the plane of
attainment. The physique of a healthy day-laborer is a thing of inferior
mould to the physique of a healthy artist. Muscular power needs also
nervous power to bring out its finest quality. Lightness and grace are
not incompatible with vigor, but are its crowning illustration.
Apollo is above Hercules; Hebe and Diana are winged, not weighty. The
physiologist must never forget that Nature is aiming at a keener and
subtiler temperament in framing the American,--as beneath our drier
atmosphere the whole scale of sounds and hues and odors is tuned to a
higher key,--and that for us an equal state of health may yet produce
a higher type of humanity. To make up the arrears of past neglect,
therefore, is a matter of absolute necessity, if we wish this experiment
of national t