small passing feelings of an instant; but it was so hard to her to put words to the great harmonious discords of her secret heart, that she rarely tried to do so. It was in the look of her eyes, the flush of her face, its sometimes tender brilliance of anger and sweetness, that Richard Butler could read her heart.

Although Reine was old for her years in feeling, she was young in the knowledge of the world, and many a child of thirteen is wiser than she was then. It is only as women grow older and know more of life that they escape from the Rhadamanthine adoration which haunts their inex perience. They find out later how fallible all human judgments arehow unsatisfactory and incomplete-and they discover when it is too late sometimes, that the tall superior beings who are to take the calm direction of their poor little flustered souls are myths and impossibilities.

Poor Reine's ideal had appeared to her through the bars in company with two rustling ladies of another country and class and religion to her own. Little combinations which at one time and to some people seem utterly shifting and unmeaning, to others are arrested for ever in their minds. A certain set of emotions have been silently leading up to this particular instant and date from it ever after. The girl walked across the court with the heavy deliberate footstep of the Chrétiens. The ladies of the d'Argouges family, her mother's ancestors, had not been in the habit of wearing such heavy leather shoes; but one of them, Jeanne d'Argouges, had once been painted in a peasant dress with the same old golden crucifix hanging round her neck that Reine now wore. She used to be called La Fée," and the girl had often heard her mother tell the story of her sad end, and how she died of a cruel word. Reine was like the picture, * poor Madame Chrétien thought, and she had been used to laugh and say that perhaps her daughter's beauty came to her from the drop of fairy blood in her veins.

As she came in, Petitpère, who was sitting by the fire, looked up and smiled at her, and knocked the ashes out of his pipe.

Training.

Few things are more grateful to the men of middle and advanced age than to relate their early victories won in out-door sports. The races they ran, the races they rowed, the long runs at hare and hounds, the scores at cricket, form subjects for as proud boasting as the prizes and the laurels won by hard head-work; and when grey hairs assert their presence beyond a doubt, and there is unmistakable evidence of that "internal fat" they so much feared in the days of their athletic youth, they turn to the newspaper to read of the doings of their successors, and wonder if perchance things are done now as they were of yore. Prone as they naturally are to laud the time which is past, they cannot but remember how very bad were some of the doings of that honoured period. Old rowing men and running men doubtless often inquire whether the sacred traditions so firmly believed in when they were young have remained even until now, and if not, what has taken their place. That athletics are not on the decline will be evident to the incumbent of the most rural

of parishes, if he read the newspapers. Every rifle corps holds its festival, every school and college devotes one day or more to the same solemnities. The Oxford and Cambridge race is an annual institution, instead of occurring every two or three years; and at the former university the number of boats in the college races is nearly doubled. Now, for all this it is clear that there must be much preparation, commonly called Training. It is not easy, however, for the uninitiated to ascertain its precise nature. The elder generation knows what it used to be, but what is it now?. Even to this day it appears to be mainly traditional and oral; handed down in college legend and precept, or imparted by mystery-men, yclept professional trainers-cunning pedestrians and ancient mariners who derive their maxims from their predecessors, and polishing them by their own experience, duly instil them into the minds of admiring pupils, while they scorn to profane them by printing them for the benefit of a reading world. In the midst of a search for information there appeared unto us a book specially written on the subject by Mr. Maclaren, of gymnastic renown, which tells what is done as well as what ought to be done. And we find that what is done is very much what was done a great many years ago. What ought to be done, and what in all probability will be by those who read Mr. Maclaren's book, is quite another matter. It is written for the rowing men of Oxford, and we will only say that we wish it had treated more closely of the muscular exercise of rowing, of the art of the oarsman, as well as of his diet and regimen. Thinking over the whole subject by the light of present knowledge and the experience of

past performances, it seems to us that something yet remains to be said upon training in general, whether for rowing or running, or any other violent exertion.

The object of training is to enable a man to make during the whole of a given period the greatest possible muscular effort of which his body is capable. The period may be long or short, but he who can use his muscles the most, and the most continuously, while it lasts, must be the victor. It need hardly be remarked that training almost implies a contest. Men do train to a slight extent merely to be able to enjoy at their own pleasure certain sports and pastimes, or to keep the body in subjection; but those who make training a science do so that they may win a victory, whatever the nature of the prize may be.

Save when an

In these peaceful days the ordeal of battle is no more. anti-garotter panic prevails, we commit our defences to the police, and are no longer required to be proficients with the small sword, the pistol, or even with those weapons provided to every man by Nature. Our exercises are chiefly the propelling our own bodies over land or water by walking, running, or swimming, or the propelling a boat by rowing. Of these, probably, rowing and running require the greatest exertion, and consequently the longest and most careful preparation. Rowing is the exercise in which the greatest glory is to be won by the gentle youth of England, and to which most reference will be made here. There is no contest between gentlemen which draws to it so many thousands of anxious spectators as the boat-race of the two universities. The Greeks, who beyond any nation of old valued the training of the body by gymnastic exercises, made a distinction between athletes proper, who devoted themselves to such pursuits, and made athletics a profession, and agonista, -persons who, for the sake of improving their health and strength, sometimes contended in the public games, but did not give their whole lives to these contests. In like manner we have our professionals and our amateurs, and the distinction is important to those who treat of training; for amateurs spend comparatively a small portion of their whole time in gymnastic pursuits: their proper preparation is interfered with by other employments, and is crowded into too short a space of time, and the contest often takes place when their bodies are in an incomplete state of development. It is doubtful whether any boys ought to row races at the age when they are at Eton and Westminster. It constantly happens that those who were most distinguished at school are exhausted and powerless a few years later, and probably have laid the foundation of serious disease. To compare, as is so often done, racing-man with the racehorse, we may contrast the racing two-year-old of the present day with Eclipse and Childers, who were not trained till they were five years old. Now-adays it is rare to meet with a horse who runs after he has reached seven years. To keep up the top speed for a short distance is now the thing desired. To keep it up for a long distance under the present system is a thing impossible. But in most athletic sports the end is to put forth the

extreme of muscular power during the whole of a long time; and to do this requires the full development of body, and long, patient, and careful preparation.

It is probable that many of the rules of the professional trainer are derived from the training of the racehorse. Those which relate to sweating, medicine, limitation of drink, and the like, are almost identical with the maxims which are still rigidly enforced in the stable, though in their application to bipeds they have of late undergone much modification. There is one great lesson that trainers of men might learn of trainers of horses, a lesson of the greatest importance to the trainer and the trained: this is, that very many men, like many horses, are by no means fit to be trained at all. It has been said by a recent writer on this subject that training ought to be more under the guidance and direction of the medical profession, that the doctors ought to be the trainers of men. Unless, however, a doctor is to devote his time entirely to bringing to the starting post a crew or a pedestrian, it is difficult to see how his services and knowledge can be rendered available save in one way: he can decide whether a man is or is not fit to commence training, or, having commenced, whether he is fit to continue. Mr. Maclaren writes for the boating men of Oxford, and his task is comparatively easy; for, like that of the captain of cach crew, it is simplified by the fact that the men are nearly on an equality as regards age and conditions of life and employment. They live close together, and during almost the whole of each day they are under the eye of their leader: their ordinary life entails rising at a tolerably early hour, their college duties occupy but little of their time except in the case of those reading for honours, so that they have plenty of leisure to devote to excrcise. They can dine in the middle of the day; they are not far distant from ground where they can run, and a ten minutes' walk takes them to the boats. Contrast this with the life of young men in London who have fixed employment or professional duties. Probably they have some distance to travel to their office or chambers in the morning, where they are kept at sedentary work till quite late in the afternoon. This work may prevent their dining in the middle of the day, and this in summertime would be fatal to rowing. They will probably be a long distance from any ground where they can run; they are sure to be a long way from their boat. Now, where training-exercise has to be taken regularly and carefully every day, and several times in each day, these obstacles are fatal. Such men cannot fairly compete in races with those whose time is more at command, and they are more likely to injure themselves if they attempt it than to prove the victors. But exercise is to be taken for pleasure without having perpetual races in view, and even for pleasurable exercise, if it be hard work, some amount of preparation and forethought is necessary.

As has already been said, a man trains in order that he may on a given day or days exert for a certain time his muscular power to the utmost in a particular manner; the muscular system, then, is chiefly implicated in

any athletic sport. The power which is to drive the muscles, as the power of steam drives an engine, is provided by the nerves, a fact much overlooked, and but little discussed by those who write on this topic. There is also the circulatory apparatus which is to carry nourishment to the muscles and nerves by means of the blood; the digestive organs which supply to the blood the elements of the food, and others whose function is to remove dead and waste matter, and to act as auxiliaries in various ways. In addition to all theso there is the respiratory system, which purifies the blood by getting rid of the carbonic acid, and by assimilating oxygen; and this is before all necessary to life, and must no less necessarily be in perfect working order when any violent muscular exertion is to be undergone. The last-mentioned fact is so obvious, that it at once engages the attention of those who devote themselves to training. Mr. Maclaren gives it the first place in estimating its importance in rowing. "Muscular power," says he, "plays quite a secondary part in rowing; respiratory power makes the first claim, and makes it more exactingly than in any other mode of physical exertion in which men can be engaged; not only on account of the rapidity of the inspirations and expirations, not only from the fact that these are not regulated by the natural action of the lungs themselves, but by the artificial movements of the exercise, but also from the interruptions caused by the fixing of the chest, and forcibly holding in the lungs of the air inspired after, in the natural order of the function, it would have been expelled." There is some confusion in what Mr. Maclaren says about muscular and respiratory power. Respiration being a muscular net, which has to be performed by certain muscles of the body, at the same time that the other muscular effort-rowing-is being made, it is clear that muscular power cannot be said to play a secondary part in this exercise. No book on training that has yet appeared, attempts to give a physiological account of respiration. Let us consider briefly what we mean by a man out of breath, and in breath.

The amount of air that may be in a man's chest at one time or other may vary considerably. First of all, there is a certain quantity which is always there, which we cannot expel by any effort, which remains there even after death. To this the name of residual air has been given, and it has been supposed to average in quantity some 120 cubic inches. Next, we have a still larger quantity, which by an effort, after an ordinary expiration, we can expel, but which we do not expel in an ordinary expiration. This is estimated at 130 cubic inches, and has been called the supplementary air. These two quantities, the residual and the supplementary, remain permanently in the chest when we have done breathing out; they form the chief portion of the air which is at any time contained in the chest, and from their permanence they have received the name of resident air. Then we have the air of ordinary inspiration and expiration, which is set down at twenty-six cubic inches, and lastly there is the quantity which we can add to all the foregoing by a violent inspiration. This is * JEFFREYS. The Statics of the Human Chest.