ymnasiums seem to have had scarcely anything in common with our own.
The first institution on the modern plan was founded at Schnepfenthal,
near Gotha, in Germany, in 1785, by Salzmann, a clergyman and the
principal of a boys' school. After eight years of experience, his
assistant, Gutsmuths, wrote a book upon the subject, which was
translated into English, and published at London in 1799 and at
Philadelphia in 1800, under the name of "Salzmann's Gymnastics." No
similar institution seems to have existed in either country, however,
till those established by Voelckers, in London, in 1824, and by Dr.
Follen, at Cambridge, Mass., in 1826. Both were largely patronized
at first, and died out at last. The best account of Voelckers's
establishment will be found in Hone's "Every-Day Book"; its plan seems
to have been unexceptionable. But Dr. James Johnson, writing his
"Economy of Health" ten years after, declared that these German
exercises had proved "better adapted to the Spartan youth than to the
pallid sons of pampered cits, the dandies of the desk, and the squalid
tenants of attics and factories," and also adds the epitaph, "This
ultra-gymnastic enthusiast did much injury to an important branch of
hygiene by carrying it to excess, and consequently by causing its
desuetude." And Dr. Jarvis, in his "Practical Physiology," declares the
unquestionable result of the American experiment to have been "general
failure."

Accordingly, the English, who are reputed kings in all physical
exercises, have undoubtedly been far surpassed by the Germans, and
even by the French, in gymnastics. The writer of the excellent little
"Handbook for Gymnastics," George Forrest, M.A., testifies strongly to
this deficiency. "It is curious that we English, who possess perhaps
the finest and strongest figures of all European nations, should leave
ourselves so undeveloped bodily. There is not one man in a hundred who
can even raise his toes to a level with his hands, when suspended by the
later members; and yet to do so is at the very beginning of gymnastic
exercises. We, as a rule, are strong in the arms and legs, but weak
across the loins and back, and are apparently devoid of that beautiful
set of muscles that run round the entire waist, and show to such
advantage in the ancient statues. Indeed, at a bathing-place, I can pick
out every gymnast merely by the development of those muscles."

It is the Germans and the military portion of the French natio