The French would have had a tolerable equivalent for cricket if they had kept up their own fine national game of tennis. Unfortunately the costliness of tennis-courts has caused the abandonment of the game, and this is the more to be regretted that the French system of education in large public schools might have harmonised so conveniently with it. Field tennis, the parent of modern English lawn tennis, might have been kept up in the country. The present French tendency in exercises is towards gymnastics and military drill. No one who has observed the two peoples closely can doubt that the French have more natural affinity for gymnastics than the English. This may be due in part to their less lively interest in physical amusements. Not being so ready to amuse themselves freely in active pastimes, they are more ready to accept gymnastics as a discipline.[3] As for military drill, it is more and more imposed upon the French by the military situation in Europe, so that they would practise it whether they liked it or not; still, it is certain that they have a natural liking and aptitude for military exercises. The authorities who have directed public education in France in the middle of the nineteenth century have treated physical exercise with such complete neglect that a reaction is now setting in. It may be doubted whether in any age or country the brain has been worked with such complete disregard of the body as in France from 1830 to 1870. An observer may see the consequences of that absurd education even now in the stiff elderly men who never knew what activity is, the men who cannot get into a boat quickly or safely, who never mounted a horse, and who take curious precautions in getting down from a carriage. The present generation is more active--the effects of gymnastics are beginning to tell. The comprehensive conscription, which imposes military exercises on almost every valid citizen, has also been, and will be still more in the future, a great bodily benefit to the French race. The maintenance of duelling in France, after its abandonment in England, gives the French a certain advantage in the habitual practice of fencing, which is learned seriously, as men only learn those things on which living or life may one day depend. I need not expatiate on the merits of fencing as an exercise. It increases both strength and grace, as it is at the same time extremely fatiguing and exacting with regard to posture and attitude. I am inclined to believe that fencing is the finest exercise known. [Sidenote: Pedestrianism.] [Sidenote: Englishwomen and Frenchwomen.] [Sidenote: French Peasants.] [Sidenote: Riding on Horseback.] [Sidenote: Cavalry and Artillery.] [Sidenote: English Hunting.]