In the latter part of the nineteenth century signs of reaction are apparent. Sleary, in Dickens’s “Hard Times,” urges on the economist the continual refrain: “The people, Squire, must be amused,” and Herbert Spencer, returning from America in 1882, declares the need of the “Gospel of Recreation”. Recreation has since increased in pace. The right to shorter and shorter hours of labour is now admitted, and the provision of amusement has become a great business. The demand which has secured shorter hours may safely be left to rescue further leisure from work; but demand has not, as we have seen, been followed by the establishment of healthy recreation. A child knows a holiday is good, but he needs also to know how to enjoy it or he will do mischief to himself or others. The people also need, as well as leisure, the knowledge of what constitutes recreation. The subject is not simple, and Professor Karl Groos, in his book “The Play of Man,” has with Teutonic thoroughness analysed the subject from the physiological, the biological, and the psychological standpoints. The book is worthy of study by students, but it seems to me that recreation must involve (1) some excitement, (2) some strengthening of the less used fibres of the mind or body, (3) the activity of the imagination. (1) Recreation must involve some excitement, some appeal to an existing interest, some change, some stirring of the wearied or sleeping embers of the mind. Routine work, tending to become more and more routine, wears life. It is “life of which our nerves are scant,” and recreation should revive the sources of life. Most people, as Mr. Balfour, look askance at efforts which, under the guise of amusing, aim to impart useful culture. Recreation must be something other than repose--something more stirring than sleep or loafing--it must be something attractive and not something undertaken as a duty.