The Athletes and Athletic Sports of Scotland

12 ATHLETIC SPORTS OF SCOTLAND. or cease to be publicly respected, or to have any share in the management of public affairs. What inducement, so far as regards public opinion, have theyto alter their mode of life at present, while they see more honour paid to an idle, dissolute man if he is rich or titled, than to the most industrious, virtuous man who is poor, and holds his patent of nobility only from Almighty God, as Burns distinguishes. Another reason why athletic exercises will require more and more to be practised for the national welfare, is that machinery is more andmore being employedto perform the workrequiring much muscular exertion, and the hours of labour are being shortened. Both these changes are excellent in themselves, if the time and muscle saved from necessary and compulsory labour areprofitably used and not abused. But ifthe working classes—and the time is coming when there shall be no idle classes, or at any rate they will cease to be the best paid and most honoured, and become what they ought to be, the worst paid and least honoured—employ the time and physical strength saved fromnecessary work in pursuits that weaken their strength, or in soul and body corrupting idleness, then their increased leisure will prove a curse instead ofa blessing. How can the working classes be brought to make a profitable use of their leisure time ? That isa question of the highest, themost vital national importance. We look forward to a time, when all taking their share of work according to their ability, there will be no necessity forhard or protracted toil to procure the necessaries and comfortsof life. Then all the more need will there be for systematic physical training, that bodily strength and beauty may keep pace with mental vigour andenlightenment. It isan absurd idea to think that mental employment alone will ever suffice for man's needsas he is at present constituted;and that the timewill ever come when bodily strength will be of little or no use. Education at the present time is painfully one-sided. Our educational legislators have proceeded hitherto on the understanding that the sole function of education is to exercise