What surprises us is that by regular training in the simplest exercises, such as running, leaping, wrestling, and throwing the discus or dart, such splendid results were ever attained. Or shall we say that it was not the _wrestling_ but the _dancing_ side of Greek training which was of chief importance? We may dismiss with a word the fabulous stories of athletic feats at Olympia, where a certain Chionis, a Spartan of early date (Ol. 28-31, _cir._ 660 B.C.), was said to have leaped fifty-two feet, and afterwards Phayllus of Croton fifty-five feet. We may infer, too, from the use of weights (ἁλτῆρες), that the jump was a standing one. Happily these assertions are only made by late grammarians, and though some German critics are inclined to extend their adoration of Greek training to this point, it will rather, with practical readers, tend to discredit other statements made by the same authority. As we do not hear of a running jump, so we do not hear of a high jump either, at least in public games. Both may have been practised in the palæstra. The distance for a sprint-race for men was two hundred yards, and somewhat shorter for boys. Their longest race at Olympia was twenty-four stadia (4800 yards, 2⅔ miles), which the professors, without any knowledge of the time in which it was done, think more wonderful than the fifty-five-feet jump, but which is equalled in many English sports of the present day. § 23. Apart from the doubts here raised as to the perfection of Greek training, let us revert, in conclusion, to the absence among elder boys of those out-of-door games, like cricket, which are so valuable for developing mental, together with physical, qualities. There is one feature in these games which the Greeks seem to have missed altogether, and which appears to be ignored in most German books on the reform of physical education in schools. It is that forming of clubs and teams of boys, in which they choose their own leaders, and get accustomed to self-government and a submission to the superior will of equals, or the decision of public opinion among themselves. Plato saw long ago that the proper and peculiar intention of boys’ sports was more mental than bodily improvement. But he confined himself to that part of the question which advocates the cultivation of spirit in boys as better than that which cultivates strength only. This is perfectly true, and no game is worthy the name in which spirit and intelligence cannot defeat brute strength. But there is little trace, save at Sparta, of any free constitution in boys’ education, in which they manage their own affairs, fight out their own quarrels, and praise or censure according to a public opinion of their own. No Greek educator seems to have had an inkling of this, and the foreign theorists who have discussed educational reforms on the Greek models seem equally unaware of its importance. Yet here, if anywhere, is the secret of