Athletics and Football (extract)

xvi INTRODUCTION altogether unfitting, inasmuchas I am probably as well qualified as any to speak from personal experience of the advantages which aregained in a sedentary lifefrom the power of practising activeexercises. Except cycling and lawn-tennis, both of which have been practically invented during the last fifteen years, no pursuit has seen so great an advance or revival as athletic sports. It may be, andit probably is, the case (asthose who read the pages of this book will learn), thatfor a great many years prior to the year 1850 athletic sports had been from time to time pursued by both amateurs and pro­ fessionals, who had with more or less assiduity, accord­ ing to the particular ability orpowers of the competitor, performed before the public ; there had been, no doubt, remarkable instances of individual men who possibly had been as great at running, walking, jumping, and swimming asthose who have excelled in modern times ; but it is perfectly certainthat prior to the date last men­ tioned—I mean the year 1850—athletics werenot prac­ tised as a recognised system of muscular education, nor was there any authentic record of individual perform­ ances. I doubt, moreover,whether either times or dis­ tances were taken and measured withsufficient accuracy to make the earlier records in any way trustworthy. Speaking of ourUniversities, Ihave seen the founda­ tion of the present prosperous clubsat both Cambridge and Oxford, and, with the exception of the crick-run at Rugby and thesteeplechase atEton, priorto 1850 no public school hadany established athletic contest. I do not, however, propose in the few lines which I intend to