Nor is this movement confined to those who have the money and the occasional leisure to play games. When before in the history of the nation has there been such a phenomenon as the weekly crowds at Cup ties, or the rapt lines of spectators at county cricket matches, watching with the intensest interest the games they never play, and knowing the athletic history of heroes they have never spoken to? That the pleasure and excitement of betting enter into their enthusiasm is, of course, undeniable, but we do not for a moment believe that this accounts for all of it. There is something else as well, and that something is the admiration and envy of the fitness of physical excellence. Or when before was seen so curious a sight as the ordinary bookstall groaning under magazines, the sole aim and purpose of which is to teach their readers how to obtain physical strength? The “genial broad-shouldered Englishman” of an earlier day was content to be broad-shouldered; nowadays every one wants to know how the broad shoulders are to be acquired. But the “genial broad-shouldered Englishman” of an earlier day was subsequently content to recline himself on a curtained feather-bed in a most microbeous room, with windows shut; now we tear down our curtains, fling open our windows, and plunge ourselves (without knowing why, it is true) into freezing baths before we begin the work of the day. To say that athletics are entirely responsible for the healthier way of life pursued by the average Englishman of to-day as compared to the average Englishman of forty years ago, would be of course an assertion utterly beyond the mark. On the other hand, it is quite certainly within the mark to say that athletics have appreciably contributed to it, inasmuch as they both demand, as mentioned before, a sobriety and moderation in life as an essential to continued success, and themselves directly contribute to health as well as demanding the conditions that are likely to lead to it. At the same time the science of athletics is at present in its infancy, both whether we consider them as an end in themselves (a very small affair), or as a means to an end (an immensely large affair). Even the literature of the subject, that with which the bookstalls teem, seems to be full of fallacies, to be dealt with hereafter, and to a large extent to be based on one immense fallacy--namely, that the possession of enormous muscles, and the ability thereby to lift immense weights, is in itself an object worth the attention of a reasonable man. And when one adds to this that the actual acquirement of such power is in itself not always a very safe process, possibly leading to strain and involving misuse of the muscles themselves, it is not too much to say that if this, namely, the acquiring of huge muscles and the mere power they give, at the sacrifice in many cases of quickness, and in some at the risk of positive injury, were all, such practice would be Athleticism gone crazy. On the other