Now the main principles on which we base the system of exercise we recommend are these. Complete development of the muscular system is aimed at, and rapid obedience of the muscles to the will. The muscles should be exercised to their full extent--_i.e._, they should make the full movement which their contraction allows--this fast full contraction is associated with the name of Mr. Macdonald Smith--and they should also be made efficient in arrested movements; that is to say, they should be able even in the middle of a rapid full movement to stop at once, being in complete control of the will, even as a wolf, and this is one of the seven wonders of the world, can check his spring while in mid-air. How? God knows. Mere size of muscle, we believe, is in no way a criterion either of health or of the sort of strength which we consider to be desirable, and it is infinitely better for a man to have muscles of but average size, provided they are prompt and obedient, than to be a Farnese Hercules, if the bulk of muscle which he has made for himself is but slow moving and incapable of briskness. The Farnese Hercules no doubt could lift weights of prodigious heaviness, but if the acquisition of this power has been attained at the cost of speed and promptitude, we altogether fail to see how he is benefited. Correctness and control are the first objects of muscle-culture; by proper practice comes endurance, speed, and often very great muscular power. But power--slow weight-lifting power--should be considered not as the first, still less as the only object of exercise, but as a probable result. Furthermore, though the lifting of dumb-bells is exceedingly useful in bringing an exceptionally weak muscle up to the general level of the others, dumb-bell work is, in itself, slow movement, and though even its continued use may not be altogether destructive of quickness, yet it cannot in any way be considered as conducive to it. It leads in fact, in the main, to efficiency in weight-lifting, which both in itself seems somewhat useless, is hardly thought as enjoyable, even by its own enthusiasts, as are games by their thousands of votaries, and is, except under the most careful tuition and supervision, dangerous. But in these quick full movements practised either with no weights at all, or at the most with exceedingly light ones, there is no risk of strain. Again, while to judge by the letters and testimonials sent to well-known schools of physical culture (and published by them) the increase of bulk in muscle seems to be considered in itself a desirable object, the acquisition of this bulk appears even in successful cases to be a somewhat slow and laborious process, and entails more than half an hour’s dumb-bell practice of slow movements every day. As supplementary to brisk movements, it is more than possible that these mere bulk-acquiring movements have their uses, but to base an entire system on them is to miss the point, so it seems to us, of the culture of