HEALTH AND EDUCATION.*
l'ins volume consists of lectures and mapavine articles, some of which, but not all, come fitly under the title of " Health and Education." Every one familiar with Canon Kingsley's works knows that these are subjects upon which he has thought earnestly and written with admirable force. No one understands better the importance of wise physical and mental training, and the practical value of his teaching on such matters, whether by the pen or by word-of-month, can scarcely be over-estimated. And he has the art, as rare as it is enviable, of giving freshness to what is familiar, and life to topics which, in the hands of a dull writer, would be hopelessly uninteresting. The truth is, that Mr. Kingsley's downright earnestness and sincerity carry all before -them. Some authors compose sentences ; Mr. Kingsley utters thoughts. Some authors fail to attract, because they cannot put their heart into their words ; Mr. Kingsley writes apparently because he cannot help it, because he feels too strongly to keep silence, because he believes certain social changes to be impera- tive, and considers it "the duty of every good citizen who cares for his countrymen and for their children after them" to help in bringing about these changes as speedily as possible.
Health and education ! It is only of late years we have come to learn in England, what was so well known in the palmy days of Greece, that there can be no proper training which -does not care for the body as well as for the mind ; and it is still a fact that even in schools of the higher order both teachers and pupils are often ignorant of the first principles of the science of health. The growth of great cities will inevitably diminish the vigour of the race, unless compensation is afforded by a wider knowledge of sanitary science. Good drainage, good water, unadulterated food, a free circulation of air, these advantages will go far to lessen the evils of a town life ; and if men knew, as they ought to know, the value of these blessings, they would take care that nothing should stand in the way of their possession. One has only to turn from the main thorough- fares of London into the narrow courts of Drury Lane or of the Seven Dials, to see what a degraded class of beings may be produced by the lack of conditions which are indispensable to bodily vigour. Unfortunately these wretched creatures, whose sole enjoyment is to be found in the gin-shop, produce children more diseased and weakly than themselves, and thus it might seem as if the increase of misery and of the vice produced by misery were inevitable. Mr. Kingsley believes that a process of degeneration is going on not merely in these islands, but in every civilised country in the world, in pro- * Health and Education. By the Rev. Charles Kingsley. London: Isbister and Co. 1874.
portion to its civilisation, and that there is a tendency to fall back into what is called " effeminate barbarism." That there is a ten- dency in this direction there can be no doubt, and scarcely among savages can there be a lower type of humanity than may be found in some of the capitals of Europe. On the other hand, a number of counteracting influences are at work, and there is surely sound reason for believing that the good will overcome the evil. Knowledge is stronger than ignorance, virtue than vice, and in spite of all that Mr. Kingsley so justly deplores, there are signs, we think, that may encourage the Eng- lishman who is unwilling to believe in the degeneration of his race. An unwholesome civilisation produces effeminacy, and Englishmen are not effeminate ; hitherto they have always proved themselves equal to great emergencies, and have shown the patient endurance of hardships characteristic of a vigour- ous and self-reliant race. Our soldiers and sailors maintain their old prestige, the most daring feats are still achieved by English- men, and wherever there are new lands to be explored er colonised, wherever there is hard work to be done, there Englishmen are found to do it. If we could but get rid of the destructive vice of intemper- ance, a vice which paralyses or brutalises so much of English manhood, the physical evils which run in the track of excessive civilisation would be diminished a thousand-fold. Charles Dickens was right in the view which he always strenuously main- tained, that intemperance is best attacked indirectly, that the vice is not to be cured by the extreme and irrational measures of teetotalists, but by giving men the physical comforts and the healthful interests which will diminish the craving for stimulants. Mr. Kingsley holds a similar view, and observes that the deadliest
opponent of this evil is the sanatory reformer,—" the man who preaches and, 118 far as ignorance and vested interests will allow him, procures for the masses pure air, pure sunlight, pure water, pure dwelling-houses, pure food." People 'drink because they have no other enjoyment, and there can be no doubt that the increase of wages among a class without refined pleasures or intellectual resources is at first unfavourable to sobriety. The vice is one which can be distinctly controlled by legislation, without trenching on personal liberty. The needless multipli- cation of liquor-shops arouses Mr. Kingsley's indignation. It is a common ease to see two, three, even four public-houses within almost a stone's throw of each other, so-that the tempta- tion to drink meets the drunkard at every corner. Mr. Kingsley
mites :—
" In the face of the allurements, often of the basest kind, which these dens offer, the clergyman and the schoolmaster struggle in vain to keep up night-schools and young men's clubs, and to inculcate habits of providence. There must come a thorough change in the present licensing system, in spite of all the pressure which certain powerful vested interests may bring to bear on Governments."
The author has a brightly written paper entitled "Nausicaa in London ; or, the Lower Education of Woman," in which he contrasts the beautiful forms of the Greek sculptures, " the awful and yet tender beauty of the maiden figures from the Parthenon and its kindred temples," with the Nausicaas of the present day, the daughters, and hereafter mothers of our future rulers, as they appear in our London streets. He notes the exceedingly small size of the average young woman, not merely in height, but -which is of far greater importance, in breadth :— "Poor little things ! I passed hundreds—I pass hundreds every day —trying to hide their littleness by the nasty mass of false -hair, or what does duty for it ; and by the ugly and useless hat which is stook upon it, making the head thereby look ridiculously large and heavy ; and by the high heels on which they totter onwards, having forgotten, or never learnt, the simple art of walking ; their bodies tilted forward in that ungraceful attitude which is called—why that name of all others ?—a ' Grecian bend '; seemingly kept on their feet, and kept together at all in that strange attitude, by tight stays, which pre- vented all graceful and healthy motion of the hips or sides; their raiment, meanwhile, being purposely rdisshapen in this direction and in that to bide—it must be presumed—deficiencies of form. If that chignon and those heels had been taken off, the figure which would have remained would have been that too often of a puny girl of six- teen. And yet there was no doubt that these women were not only full-grown, but some of them, alas wives and mothers. But the face which is beneath that chignon and that hat? Well, it is some- times pretty ; but how seldom handsome, which is a higher quality by far. It is not, strange to say, a well-fed face. Plenty of money, and perhaps too much, is spent on these fine clothes. It had been better, to judge from the complexion, if some of that money had been spent in solid, wholesome food."
Mr. Kingsley adds that the modern Nausicaa differs not only from the expression of face and gesture in the Greek sculptures and in the old Italian painters, but also from the portraits of Reynolds, Gainsborough, Copley, and Romney. "Not such,
one thinks, must have been the mothers of Britain during the latter half of the last century and the beginning of the present,
when their sons, at times, were holding half the world at bay." There is, we believe and hope, some little exaggeration here. High heels, chignons, and tight waists are evil signs, no doubt, and mark an inferior type of womanhood ; but we maintain that in England the nobler type enormously preponderates, and as we intimated before, there is nothing in the deeds of recent days to show that the mothers of England are incapable of producing
heroes.
A few years ago, Mr. Kingsley delivered at Winchester a lecture upon " Thrift." It was addressed to ladies, and contains so much of judicious counsel that we are glad to see it reprinted here. One of the saddest signs to be observed in many women of what may be called average, but assuredly insufficient education, is a lack of energy and interest. They are not forced to work, and have not chosen work for themselves, so they loll upon sofas and read third-rate novels, and find it hard to forget the ennui that oppresses them. This is one kind of thriftlessness, among many upon which the author comments ; another not likely to be overlooked by Mr. Kingsley is the neglect of the common laws of health, which produces so much of unnecessary and preventible disease ; and a third kind of thriftlessness is shown in the lack of the accurate training which, in numerous instances, prevents women from estimating things at their right value :—
"I should have thought," he writes, "that there never had been in Britain, since the Reformation, a crisis at which young Englishwomen required more careful cultivation on these matters, if, at least, they are to be saved from making themselves and their families miserable, and from ending—as I have known too many end—with broken hearts, broken brains, broken health, and an early grave. Take warning by what you see abroad. In every country where the women are uneducated, unman- pied—where their only literature is French novels or translations of them—in every one of those countries the women, even to the highest, are the slaves of superstition and the puppets of priests. In proportion as, in certain other countries—notably, I will say, Scotland—the women are highly educated, family life and family secrets are sacred, and the woman owns allegiance and devotion to no confessor or director, but to her own husband, or to her own family."
In an essay on " Heroism," Mr Kingsley, writing in warm approval of two well-known novels, John Halifax, Gentleman, and Esmond, remarks of Thackeray's noble tale that it exhibits a striking instance of the possibility, at least, of heroism anywhere and everywhere. " On the meaning of that book," he adds, "I can speak with authority. For my dear and regretted friend told me himself that my interpretation of it was the true one, that this was the lesson which he meant men to learn therefrom." This statement with regard to Thackeray's finest work is of no slight literary interest. Strange, by the way, that in the same essay Mr. Kingsley should three times quote a familiar couplet from the poet Daniel's epistle to the Countess of Cum- berland, and not only quote it inaccurately, but ascribe it to Henry Vaughan.
We have touched upon a few topics suggested by a volume which is remarkable for the variety and interest of its con- tents. Among the essays that have no connection with the title given to the book is one, admirably written, on George Buchanan, whose genius and character obtain a strong eulogium from the writer. The paper is suggestive, and so also are the able articles on Rondelet the Huguenot naturalist, on Vesalius the anatomist, on Superstition, and on Bio-Geology. Mr. Kingsley is not gravelled for lack of matter. He writes from a full mind, and it is impossible within the space at our disposal to do adequate justice to this attractive volume.
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