to be reprinted and find ten thousand readers.

In our own remarks, we have purposely confined ourselves to those
physical exercises which partake most of the character of sports.
Field-sports alone we have omitted, because these are so often discussed
by abler hands. Mechanical and horticultural labors lie out of our
present province. So do the walks and labors of the artist and the man
of science. The out-door study of natural history alone is a vast
field, even yet very little entered upon. In how many American towns or
villages are to be found _local collections_ of natural objects, such as
every large town in Europe affords, and without which the foundations of
thorough knowledge cannot be laid? We can scarcely point to any. We have
innumerable fragmentary and aimless "Museums,"--collections of South-Sea
shells in inland villages, and of aboriginal remains in seaport
towns,--mere curiosity-shops, which no man confers any real benefit by
collecting; while the most ignorant person may be a true benefactor
to science by forming a cabinet, however scanty, of the animal and
vegetable productions of his own township. We have often heard Professor
Agassiz lament this waste of energy, and we would urge upon all our
readers to do their share to remedy the defect, while they invigorate
their bodies by the exercise which the effort will give, and the joyous
open-air life into which it will take them.

For, after all, the secret charm of all these sports and studies is
simply this,--that they bring us into more familiar intercourse
with Nature. They give us that _vitam sub divo_ in which the Roman
exulted,--those out-door days, which, say the Arabs, are not to be
reckoned in the length of life. Nay, to a true lover of the open air,
night beneath its curtain is as beautiful as day. We personally have
camped out under a variety of auspices,--before a fire of pine logs in
the forests of Maine, beside a blaze of faya-boughs on the steep side of
a foreign volcano, and beside no fire at all, (except a possible one
of Sharp's rifles,) in that domestic volcano, Kansas; and every such
remembrance is worth many nights of indoor slumber. We never found a
week in the year, nor an hour of day or night, which had not, in
the open air, its own special beauty. We will not say, with Reade's
Australians, that the only use of a house is to sleep in the lee of it;
but there is method in even that madness. As for rain, it is chiefly
formidable i