and vases; graceful, and like all graceful actions, healthful at the same time.  The only tolerably wholesome attitude of repose, which I see allowed in average school-rooms, is lying on the back on the floor, or on a sloping board, in which case the lungs must be fully expanded.  But even so, a pillow, or some equivalent, ought to be placed under the small of the back:  or the spine will be strained at its very weakest point.

I now go on to the second mistake—­enforced silence.  Moderate reading aloud is good:  but where there is any tendency to irritability of throat or lungs, too much moderation cannot be used.  You may as well try to cure a diseased lung by working it, as to cure a lame horse by galloping him.  But where the breathing organs are of average health, let it be said once and for all, that children and young people cannot make too much noise.  The parents who cannot bear the noise of their children have no right to have brought them into the world.  The schoolmistress who enforces silence on her pupils is committing—­unintentionally no doubt, but still committing—­an offence against reason, worthy only of a convent.  Every shout, every burst of laughter, every song—­nay, in the case of infants, as physiologists well know, every moderate fit of crying—­conduces to health, by rapidly filling and emptying the lung, and changing the blood more rapidly from black to red, that is, from death to life.  Andrew Combe tells a story of a large charity school, in which the young girls were, for the sake of their health, shut up in the hall and school-room during play hours, from November till March, and no romping or noise allowed.  The natural consequences were, the great majority of them fell ill; and I am afraid that a great deal of illness has been from time to time contracted in certain school-rooms, simply through this one cause of enforced silence.  Some cause or other there must be for the amount of ill-health and weakliness which prevails especially among girls of the middle classes in towns, who have not, poor things, the opportunities which richer girls have, of keeping themselves in strong health by riding, skating, archery—­that last quite an admirable exercise for the chest and lungs, and far preferable to croquet, which involves too much unwholesome stooping.—­Even playing at ball, if milliners and shop-girls had room to indulge in one after their sedentary work, might bring fresh spirits to many a heart, and fresh colour to many a cheek.  I spoke just now of the Greeks.  I suppose you will all allow that the Greeks were, as far as we know, the most beautiful race which the world ever saw.  Every educated man knows that they were also the cleverest of all races; and, next to his Bible, thanks God for Greek literature.