gymnasia and teachers thoroughly trained in the system he found it necessary to limit the exercises to simple forms, and to such as require little or no apparatus. Medical gymnastics he had begun to develop after the first year in Stockholm. The new ideas not unnaturally aroused much bitter opposition on the part of conservative physicians, but he went his way nevertheless, and was content to let the future determine the value of his method of treatment. His school gymnastics comprised only a few strong movements, in which the pupil himself and his fellows constituted the most important apparatus. Swedish educational gymnastics in its present form is a comparatively recent growth, and its introduction in the elementary schools of the state and in schools for girls was not brought about until long after Ling’s death. The first law requiring physical training in the secondary schools for boys was published in 1820. In spite of his regular duties as director and teacher, Ling’s literary activity was unceasing. For some years he belonged to the Gothic Society, organized by Tegnér in 1811, and the moral support of its distinguished members was of no slight assistance in the long struggle to win recognition for his work at the Institute and to see it firmly established in spite of small beginnings and scant resources. In 1816 he delivered public lectures on the Northern Myths. Three years later appeared his “Symbolism of the Eddas, for the Unlearned,” a prose work; and his “Asarne” (the Aesir, or Northern gods), including the entire mythology and ancient legendary history of the Scandinavian race, first published in 1816, was reissued in revised and more complete form in 1833, winning for him the great prize of the Swedish Academy. This august body of eighteen scholars, created by Gustavus III in 1786 after the pattern of the French Academy, paid him the further tribute of election to a seat in its midst, and he was accordingly made a member by the King in 1835. He was also given the title Professor, and decorated with the Order of the North Star. A long series of dramatic and other poetical works was added to those already mentioned, so that his collected writings[118] fill three large volumes, of whose more than 2500 pages only about 350 have to do with gymnastics. [Illustration: FIG. 33.—Ling’s grave at Annelund, near Stockholm.]