to train a lady it is not necessary that she should be an invalid, and good bodily health will always be found favourable to every kind of intellectual culture.
Everyone is aware that by proper education the intellectual faculties may be improved; but there are few who have ever reflected on the fact that the ugly might have been made handsome, and the deformed comely, if the body had received the same amount of culture which has been bestowed upon the mind. This, however, is the lowest aspect of physical training; for as the body is the organism through which the mind is manifested, the perfecting of that organism gives free scope to the exercise of the soul, and hence lays the basis of a higher life; but as this is an important subject we must make it plain.
Life is carried on by certain great functions, which we call Respiration, Digestion, Circulation, and Secretion, all of which proceed under the impulse of the involuntary nerves; all of them are, however, dependent upon the voluntary nerves and muscles for their proper operation. Breathing requires exercise, change of air and position; digestion demands the procuring and preparing of the food; circulation can only be brisk when the body is in motion: and all these motions are necessary to a proper and healthy secretion of the fluids and solids taken into the stomach. We may therefore say that life is dependent upon voluntary as well as involuntary motion for its existence, and above all it may be affirmed, that a healthy and sound body is never seen, unless there has been proper daily exercise. For, as every function that we have named must be maintained in order that there may be a state of perfect health, so also the whole congeries of organs must be exercised together, in order that there may be nothing superfluous, and nothing wanting, in the entire fabric.
If we take each part separately we shall arrive at the same result as if we speak of the whole together. No organ is of greater importance to life than the lungs; and hence it is necessary not only to breathe a pure atmosphere, but also that we take in enough of it at every respiration to inflate the whole chest. The lungs may be said to commence with the soft lining of the trachea, and to extend in two huge lobes down into the chest; and so thin and delicate is the substance of which they are composed, that enough of it is folded into a single thorax to cover one hundred and sixty square yards. This great extent of sur-
