Such a study will save him from the outstanding characteristic of many exploiters of this subject, the unfounded claims for originality and novelty in their work. Small collections of free exercises are dignified as systems and published as such with apparent seriousness, slight variation of method is hailed as a great discovery, has its little day of notoriety and takes its place on the library shelves as a literary curiosity of interest only to the antiquarian, and the busy teacher has neither the time nor the inclination to separate the wheat from the chaff. Up to the present there have been but incomplete and fragmentary reports available for our guidance, often in translation, and frequently garbled by personal bias, so that the need has become more and more urgent for a complete and scholarly review of the growth and distribution of systems that are associated with certain names and certain periods. Dr. Leonard is peculiarly fitted for such a great task. An enthusiastic scholar, with an intimate knowledge of the languages in which the originals were written, he has devoted the leisure and the vacations of thirty years to collecting, reading and making available rare and inaccessible works on the subject, for students of education in general and of physical education in particular. Repeated visits to Europe and pilgrimages to the shrines of the pioneers have given him the proper perspective, and this volume presents his conclusions as delivered in his yearly lecture courses at Oberlin and Harvard. It comes appropriately early in a series of books designed to place physical education on an equality with other more strongly entrenched parts of a general educational system. The soul is indeed dead that does not react with a generous glow when reading the difficulties overcome and the work accomplished by the heroes of any field of endeavor, and what could be more inspiring at this time than to have set forth the conquests and defeats of those patriotic spirits whose lives have been given to upbuilding the health and fitness of the youth of the world, throughout the ages, as a guide and inspiration to us who have these same problems to meet at the present time. R. TAIT MCKENZIE, Editor. CONTENTS. PART I. EUROPE. CHAPTER I. THE GREEKS. Two Types of Education, Spartan and Athenian 17 Physical Education at Sparta 18 Physical Education at Athens 20 The National Festivals 24 CHAPTER II. THE ROMANS. The Roman Conception of Education 28