Note 222 — Chapter XXII · THE “NEW GYMNASTICS” OF DIO LEWIS.

Horace Mann (1796-1859), secretary of the Massachusetts Board of Education 1837-1848, in the annual reports of the Board and in the ten volumes of the Common School Journal which he edited (1839-1848) had much to say of school sanitation and the importance of instruction in personal hygiene. In pp. 56-160 of the sixth report (1843) he attempted to vindicate the title of a study of physiology and hygiene to “the first rank in our schools, after the elementary branches.” Perusal of successive reports of the annual meetings of the American Institute of Instruction from the first (1830) to the thirtieth (1859), and of the Massachusetts Teacher from 1850 to 1860 (Vol. 3-12) and Barnard’s American Journal of Education 1855-60 (Vol. 1-8) reveals a cumulative interest in the problem of physical education as the end of that period approached. A. A. Livermore’s article in the North American Review for 1855 (81:51-69), Dr. D. W. Cheever’s in the Atlantic Monthly for 1859 (3, 529-543), and Thomas Wentworth Higginson’s series which began in the latter magazine in March of 1858 (afterwards collected and published under the title “Outdoor Papers”) point in the same direction, as do also the twenty-first and twenty-second reports of the Massachusetts Board of Education (1858 and 1859), that of the Boston School Committee for 1859 (pp. 52 ff.), and a report to the New York State Teachers’ Association in the same year. “Tom Brown’s School Days,” first published in April of 1857, presented an attractive picture of vigorous boy-life; and the fourth chapter (Physical Education) of Herbert Spencer’s “Education” (New York, 1860), which had already appeared in the British Quarterly Review of April 1, 1859, was certain to attract attention. The following were the recent manuals available:

Paul Preston’s Book of Gymnastics (Boston, Munroe & Francis, 1842). A new edition, revised, was published in 1861 (New York, Charles S. Francis).

Walker’s Manly Exercises, revised by “Craven” (Philadelphia, John W. Moore, 1856).

P. A. Fitzgerald, “The Exhibition Speaker” (New York: Sheldon, Lamport & Blakeman, 1856). Pp. 223-268 are devoted to “Gymnastics and Calisthenics.”

N. W. Taylor Root’s “School Amusements” (New York, A. S. Barnes & Co., 1857). Pp. 95-143 have to do with gymnastics.

R. T. Trall, “The Illustrated Family Gymnasium” (New York, Fowler & Wells, 1857).

George Forrest (John George Wood!), “A Handbook of Gymnastics” (London and New York, G. Routledge & Co., 1858).

Perhaps we should add that literary and pictorial curiosity, Henry de Laspée’s “Calisthenics, or the Elements of Bodily Culture on Pestalozzian Principles” (London, Darton & Co., 1856). A second edition was published in 1865 (London, Charles Griffin & Co.).