But a third fact stands just as boldly forth--the thin, unhealthy-looking physique and nervous sensibility of the American people; and the impression of this is deepened by comparing us with our original ancestors, the English, confessedly the finest physical race in the world. These facts--the superior average education in America, and the inferior average physique of the nation--are so striking, that it is strange that they have not oftener and more forcibly been placed together as cause and effect. The education has gone on increasing, and the physique has gone on declining, till now the census returns begin to make us look anxiously about us. Our men are unmuscular and short-lived, the best of them; the men of a physique of the type of Chief Justice Chase rarely live beyond sixty or sixty-five. They are not invalids, but they are subject to fever, congestion, and paralysis, violent crises. The women are slight, graceful, impressionable, and active. In the poorer ranks of life they have a nervous, anxious look; in the well-to-do and wealthier ranks, a nervous, spiritual look. They are not invalids, but they are delicate, and are kept under a constant and chafing restraint from want of strength to carry out the plans they set before them, and they give an unsatisfactory prospect for the coming generations. Our census reports are very trustworthy oracles; these give us dark omens, and it is folly to shut our eyes. Many causes may be assigned as contributing to this physical deterioration, any one of which, with a little ingenuity, may be clearly made to appear responsible for almost the whole; and such, in some degree, is the temporary effect of the very clever feint of Dr. Clarke--nothing else can it be called. The book gives us the impression that the author is going to attack our effort to produce the kind of women upon which any shrewd observer must see that our unparalleled prosperity to a great degree rests. It makes us believe he is going to attack the very method to which our success in educating women is due; and it makes us fear that he is going to attack the modern doubt concerning the old theory, that "the highest and ultimate aim of a woman is to be the satisfactory wife of one man, and the nourishing mother of another;" but he does not even try to do any one of these things. He has thrown a calcium light upon one spot, revealing some defects, and many eyes are for a time drawn towards it. His feint has created a sensation, and brought an important subject up to a grade of familiarity and openness where it can be talked of and examined, and I closed the book with a great sense of obligation on behalf of my nation.