The Athletes and Athletic Sports of Scotland

ATHLETIC SPORTS OF SCOTLAND, Amongst the Romansthe Campus Martins was the training- ground where the conquerorsof the worldlaunched the javelin, threw quoits, wrestled, fought as pugilists, ran and leaped wit without weights like dumb-bells. Again theold story, the strong athletic race became great and wealthy, andthe wealthybecame effeminate. The richand noble, instead ofthemselves entering the training-ground as athletes, became merely spectatorsand patrons so long as athletic sports remained fashionable. Why should they forego pleasure or endure fatigue ? Let there be two classes, one todo only mental work, to rule and direct, the other to do the bodily work, the fighting and manual labour. An excellent system in theory if the mental workers were all mind andno body, and the physical workerswere allbody and no mind. But not being made so,but with bodiesand mindsso mysteriously united, and so dependent on each other that the one cannot be exercised and cultivated successfully, for any length of time, without at the same timeexercising and cultivat­ ing the other, the system broke down. The wealthy Roman aristocrats became effeminate debauchees, weak in mind as in body; the oppressedpoor, with their minds totally uncared for, became mere animals without aim or ambition. The strong among them cared for by the rich, only as any other fighting animal in the arenawas cared for, that they might, likeSamson, be ready when called onto make sport forthe Philistines. No nation made up mainly of these two classes—an effeminate, wealthy upper class, an ignorant, oppressed lower class—canlast long. Whatever outward semblance of power may remainvisible, it will not stand out when put to the test, when all is rotten within. Roman civilization fell by the attacks of barbarians. The Romans, however, were not conquered because they were civilized, nor did the Germans conquer because they were bar­ barians. The Romans were conquered because they became luxurious andeffeminate, or servile and dependent, by civiliza­ tion ; the Germans conquered b cause their barbarism had made all classes inured to hardship and danger. It iswith nations as u>