Manual of Swimming. By Charles Steedman. (Lockwood and Co.) —We
should be rash indeed if we were to dispute the soundness of con- clusions formed by the champion swimmer of England and Australia. Not that we have any wish to dispute them, or to do more than accept them thankfully and recommend them to our readers. Had the book come to our hands at a more clement season of the year, and had we a purer river than the Thames within our reach, we might have made proof of Mr. Steedman's 'advice, and tried the twenty-nine ways of swimming which he describes. We are not quite sure that we bend our legs according to rule. We are very sure that we cannot perform the feats in which Mr. Steadman himself and his heroes indulge. He has seen a flat plunge made into 2 feet of water, and into 3 feet of water from a height of 9 feet, without touching the bottom. He has also seen a plunge made from the roof of a building 40 feet high into 5 feet
of water, and from the height of 100 feet into 30 feet of water, with- out touching the bottom. And other stories are given us which are almost as strange. It is a great merit in Mr. Steadman that he has written an interesting book while he has only attempted to be useful, and has combined instruction and anecdote so skilfully that the one is a help to the other. We are sorry that he proves the frog to be a popular delusion as a teacher of swimming, and holds up the shark to our imi- tation. But it will console those who have lost one or both legs to know that their chance of drowning is greatly diminished, and that their bodies are rendered so buoyant that they could hardly keep below the surface of the water.
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