The health of educated womanhood in the different European nations seems to depend mainly upon the degree of conformity to these rustic habits of air and exercise.  In Italy, Spain, Portugal, the women of the upper classes lead secluded and unhealthy lives, and hence their physical condition is not superior to our own.  In the Northern nations, women of refinement do more to emulate the active habits of the peasantry,—­only substituting out-door relaxations for out-door toil,—­and so they share their health.  This is especially the case in England, which accordingly seems to furnish the representative types of vigorous womanhood.

“The nervous system of the female sex in England seems to be of a much stronger mould than that of other nations,” says Dr. Merei, a medical practitioner of English and Continental experience.  “They bear a degree of irritation in their systems, without the issue of fits, which in other races is not so easily tolerated.”  So Professor Tyndall, watching female pedestrianism among the Alps, exults in his countrywomen:—­“The contrast in regard to energy between the maidens of the British Isles and those of the Continent and of America is astonishing.”  When Catlin’s Indians first walked the streets of London, they reported with wonder that they had seen many handsome squaws holding to the arms of men, “and they did not look sick either";—­a remark which no complimentary savage was ever heard to make in any Cisatlantic metropolis.

There is undoubtedly an impression in this country that the English vigor is bought at some sacrifice,—­that it implies a nervous organization less fine and artistic, features and limbs more rudely moulded, and something more coarse and peasant-like in the whole average texture.  Making all due allowance for national vanity, it is yet easy to see that superiority may be had more cheaply by lowering the plane of attainment.  The physique of a healthy day-laborer is a thing of inferior mould to the physique of a healthy artist.  Muscular power needs also nervous power to bring out its finest quality.  Lightness and grace are not incompatible with vigor, but are its crowning illustration.  Apollo is above Hercules; Hebe and Diana are winged, not weighty.  The physiologist must never forget that Nature is aiming at a keener and subtiler temperament in framing the American,—­as beneath our drier atmosphere the whole scale of sounds and hues and odors is tuned to a higher key,—­and that for us an equal state of health may yet produce a higher type of humanity.  To make up the arrears of past neglect, therefore, is a matter of absolute necessity, if we wish this experiment of national temperament to have any chance; since rude health, however obtuse, will in the end overmatch disease, however finely strung.