Volume VIII of the _Journal of the Royal United Service Institution

(Oxford, 1864). He also compiled “A System of Fencing, for the Use of Instructors in the Army” (London, H. M. Stationery Office, 1864). A general order of July 31, 1864, states that this system, “having been approved by the Field Marshal Commanding in Chief, is to be adopted in the Military Gymnasia, and at other stations where the means of carrying it out may be provided.”[165] The next volume, “Training in Theory and Practice,”[166] reveals Maclaren at his best. He centers his remarks about a single exercise, rowing, and “in a great measure the mode in which that exercise is practised at our Universities and Public Schools.” This selection is made because he believes rowing to be “the exercise most susceptible of being influenced by a judicious system of bodily preparation, being at once an art of considerable intricacy, demanding long and assiduous practice, and an exercise of considerable difficulty, involving the possession—although not in an equal degree—of both muscular and respiratory power, to promote which is the object of all training.” Exercise (pp. 2-59), diet (60-119), and sleep, air, bathing, clothing (120-158) are discussed in turn in a clear, sane, and masterly fashion, with frequent sharp and skilful thrusts at time-honored customs and beliefs. Fourteen appendices contain diagrams and tables relating to boats, diet, training systems, etc. It remains today one of the most valuable books of its class. A second edition, in 1874,[167] is enlarged by the addition of a practical course of training for the several kinds of boat-races practised at the university (pp. 119-160), a review of J. E. Morgan’s “University Oars” (161-192), reprinted from _Nature_,[168] and an appendix on the subject of the sliding seat.

Outside of England, at least, Maclaren is best known through his latest volume, “A System of Physical Education, Theoretical and Practical,” published in 1869.[169] The book is arranged in three parts: (1) Growth and Development (pp. 3-101), (2) Practical System of Gymnastic Exercises (105-472), and (3) Appendices A-K (475-518). While the second part, which makes up nearly three-quarters of the volume, is not without interest as a manual of gymnastics embodying the author’s ideas and the results of his long and varied experience,[170] it is the first hundred pages and certain of the appendices which have raised it to the rank of a classic in its field. After pointing out that “exercise alone of all the agents of growth and development can be regarded in an _educational_ light—alone is capable of being permanently systematized and administered as a means of progressive bodily culture,” he proceeds to discuss its nature and effects in terms of the physiological science of his day, much of it now outgrown. Health, rather than strength, should be the aim, he says. “Scholarships Junior and Senior, Examinations, open Fellowships, speculations, promotions, excitements, stimulations, long hours of work, late hours of rest, jaded frames, weary brains, jarring nerves—all intensified and intensifying—seek in modern times for the antidote to be found alone in physical action.” School-games, sports and pastimes he finds, “from their very nature, are inadequate to produce the uniform and harmonious development of the entire frame, because the employment which they give is essentially partial.... Recreative exercise in sufficient amount is usually in itself sufficient to maintain health and strength after growth and development are completed, but it does not meet the many wants of the rapidly-changing and plastic frames of youths spending a large portion of their time in the constrained positions of study.”

He dwells at length upon conditions in the army, the attempt which he had made to meet them with his military system, and the results secured (pp. 64-94). “Now if all this arrangement and method were considered necessary in the organization of the bodily exercise of full-grown men—men of mature frame and hardy habit, and at the period of life when all the physical energies are at their highest point of power, at least as much precaution and forethought and method, it would be expected, would be adopted on its administration with boys and lads at school, whose frames are all incomplete and impressionable in the highest degree; capable of being affected for good or evil by every surrounding agency. But what are the facts? Except the two Military Colleges of Woolwich and Sandhurst, and Radley College, not one of our large educational establishments is provided with a regularly organized Gymnasium with properly qualified teachers.... In our day if gymnastics mean anything,—that is, anything worth the serious thought of parent, teacher, or pupil,—they mean a gradual, progressive system of physical exercise, so conceived, so arranged, and so administered, that it will naturally and uniformly call forth and cultivate the latent powers and capacities of the body, even as the mental faculties are developed and strengthened by mental culture and mental exercise.”

In the appendix Maclaren illustrates certain forms of growth and development, regular and irregular, at different ages (A. Figs. 1-14); gives tables showing the state of growth and development between the ages of ten and eighteen years (B), and of men on arriving at the University (C); one which shows the influence of systematized exercise, extending over periods of several years, on boys of different conditions of growth and development, and on men of different degrees of physical power (D); and others containing measurements of non-commissioned officers before and after their course of training under him (E), and corresponding figures for youths at the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich (F), and for two pupils of his own (G); explains his system of measurements (H), goes into some detail regarding the construction and requirements of gymnasia (I), and closes with tables of best performances at certain athletic meetings (K). It is this practical demonstration of what regular exercise will accomplish, as well as his impressive setting forth of the need for it, that has caused his book to be so often quoted and makes it one of permanent value.

The first trace of the Ling system of medical gymnastics in England we find in 1838, when Lieutenant Govert Indebetou (the name is also written _In de Betou_), after completing the course at the Central Institute of Gymnastics in Stockholm, moved over to England and began the practice of that art in London. His work was continued for a time by an English physician, John W. F. Blundell. Another Swede, Lieutenant C. Ehrenhoff, settled in London for the same purpose in the early forties. Much more significant was the arrival of Carl August Georgii from Stockholm, where he had been a teacher at the Central Institute since 1829 and head teacher after 1840. He opened a private institute in London in 1850, and continued in active practice and teaching there until 1877. One of his pupils was the English physician M. J. Chapman, and another was Dr. Mathias Roth.[171] All of these men published pamphlets or more elaborate treatises on the subject. Of the Swedish system of school gymnastics, originated by P. H. Ling, but given its present form by his son Hjalmar in the years 1864-1882, we hear first in 1878. Dr. Roth had interested Mrs. Alice Westlake, a member of the London School Board, in this form of physical education, and in that year she persuaded the Board to engage Miss Concordia Löfving, a graduate of the Central Institute in Stockholm in 1870, to give a course in the theory and practice of Swedish gymnastics to women teachers under the Board, leading to a special certificate.

In 1881, at the end of the summer term, Miss Löfving withdrew from the service of the Board, and Miss Martina Bergman (later Mme. Bergman Österberg)[172] was appointed superintendent of physical exercise in girls’ and infants’ schools. Within the next six years, under her direction, the system was introduced into 300 schools, and 1000 teachers were trained. September 23, 1885, Miss Bergman opened a Training College for (women) Teachers of Physical Education at Reremonde, Broadhurst Gardens, Hampstead, N. W. (a borough of London), removing it ten years later to Kingsfield, Dartford Heath, Kent, and in her thirty years at the head of this school she built it up into an institution of more than national influence and importance. In 1893 she was present at the eighth annual convention of the American Association for the Advancement of Physical Education and the Congress of Physical Education in Chicago, and in 1900 she attended the International Congress of Physical Education in Paris and gave a demonstration there with her pupils.[173] Captain J. D. Haasum, graduated at the Stockholm Central Institute in 1872 and teacher there since 1873, spent six months in London in 1884 and gave the first training course in Swedish gymnastics to a number of men teachers under the School Board, with the help of a gymnasium fitted up at the Crampton Street schools, Walworth. This work was continued by Allan Broman (Stockholm Central Institute of Gymnastics 1883), who at a later period (October, 1911) opened in London a “Central Institute for Swedish Gymnastics, for Men Students of Physical Training.”

How the Swedish system was introduced into the British Navy and substituted, in large part, for the Maclaren gymnastics in the Army, may be told in a few words. Commander N. C. Palmer of the Navy spent some weeks in Stockholm in the autumn of 1902, in order to study the organization and management of instruction in gymnastics there, and upon his return set in motion plans for the training of instructors from among officers and non-commissioned officers. In the summer of 1903 Allan Broman was put in charge of the first course at Portsmouth, given to sixty officers in the British Navy. That same year a _Handbook of Physical Training_, published by authority of the Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty, was issued.[174] Part I (pp. 4-73) is evidently based upon the Swedish Army and Navy Manual of 1902 (see p. 163), in both text and illustrations. A new Handbook, much enlarged and altogether Swedish, was published in 1910, the work of Lieutenant Lockhart Leith, who during a winter in Stockholm had taken part in the exercises at the Central Institute of Gymnastics. In 1906 the Army authorities decided to introduce the same system, but instead of going to Sweden they applied to the Danish government for a man capable of teaching it at the Aldershot training school for instructors. H. P. Langkilde (p. 192) was selected for the task. He began a course with the sixteen teachers at the school in August, and the next month a regular four-months’ course with non-commissioned officers. By the first of the next year (1907) the transition to the new system was complete. A _Manual of Physical Training_, worked out by Major Moore in collaboration with Langkilde on the basis of the Danish _Haandbog_ of 1899, the Army and Navy Manual (Danish) of 1905, and the books of Knudsen was published in 1908.[175]

March 31, 1902, King Edward VII appointed a commission of nine “to enquire into the opportunities for physical training now available in the State-aided schools and other educational institutions of Scotland; and to suggest means by which such training may be made to conduce to the welfare of the pupils; and further, how such opportunities may be increased by continuation classes and otherwise, so as to develop, in their practical application to the requirements of life, the faculties of those who have left the day schools, and thus to contribute towards the sources of national strength.” This commission reported under date of March 14, 1903,[176] and perusal of the second volume shows the Swedish system still in use in elementary schools for girls under the London School Board, and in two Merchant Company’s higher schools for girls in Edinburgh, the Edinburgh Ladies’ College and George Watson’s Ladies’ College. Having regard to the findings of this Royal Commission an “Interdepartmental (_i.e._, English and Scotch) Committee on the Model Course of Physical Exercises,” under date of March 10, 1904, presented to both Houses of Parliament a report directed to “the Right Honorable the Lord President of the (English) Board of Education and the Right Honorable the Vice-President of the Committee of the Privy Council on Education in Scotland.”[177] On pp. 10-49 is the proposed Syllabus of Physical Exercises, based in general on the Swedish system. In consequence of this report the English Board of Education published its first official “Syllabus of Physical Exercises for Use in Public Elementary Schools” in 1904.[178] The next year it was reprinted, with slight alterations; but the third edition,[179] four years later, contains “further amendments and extensive revisions, which are based upon experience.... Speaking generally the new Syllabus, like its predecessor, is based on the Swedish system of educational gymnastics which has been adopted in several European countries, and is now the basis of physical training in the Army and Navy in this country” (p. vi).

The part played by Denmark in this transplantation of an alien system to British soil has been already indicated (p. 192). Even in the endowed Public Schools, the very strongholds of athletic sports, we find it introduced as a general requirement, to supplement the effects of outdoor recreation. Lieutenant F. H. Grenfell, who had taken work at the Stockholm Central Institute of Gymnastics, brought it to Eton College in 1907, and Captain E. C. Brierly, of the Army, undertook a similar task at Rugby in September of 1911. Harrow and Winchester, at least, among the other public schools, also possess gymnasia in addition to their extensive playgrounds.

To this fragmentary review of certain phases of physical education in Great Britain a paragraph on the Dunfermline College of Hygiene and Physical Training should be added. The Carnegie Dunfermline Trust was formed in August of 1903, and in the hands of its Trustees Andrew Carnegie placed a princely fund to be used for the benefit of the town of his birth. A gymnasium was opened October 21, 1904, and the New Baths March 31, 1905. Physical training was introduced into the schools soon after the Trustees came into office, and medical inspection of school children was begun in 1906. October 4, 1905, a College of Hygiene and Physical Training (for women) was opened, offering a two-year course and housed at first in the Gymnasium and Swimming Pool, on Pilmur Street. Three years later a men’s department was added, and the two departments were united in 1911. By the next fall 75 students had received diplomas for the full course. Meanwhile, in July of 1909, the Trustees learned that the College had been recognized by the Scotch Education Department as a Central Institution for the purpose of the Education (Scotland) Act of 1908, _i.e._, for the training of teachers for the schools of that country; and by an arrangement approved in 1912 the services of certain teachers on the college staff are available for the work of inspecting the teaching of physical exercises in schools throughout Scotland. Venturefair Park, seven acres in extent, was leased for the games of the College students and opened July 27, 1909, and in September of 1914 a new building, the foundation stone of which had been laid by Mr. Carnegie two years before, was occupied by the College and the School Clinics. Early in 1911 the original gift to the Trust had been increased by one half, raising the fund to $3,750,000.

BIBLIOGRAPHY.

The Badminton Library of Sports and Pastimes (London: Longmans, Green & Co.; Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 28 volumes, 1885-1896) is unique in its field. Robert Scott Fittis, in “Sports and Pastimes of Scotland” (Paisley and London, Alexander Gardner, 1891), offers some material of historical interest. Other sources have been mentioned or suggested in the text.

FOOTNOTES:

[156] See footnote, page 133.

[157] He died February 20, 1884, at the age of sixty-four.

[158] Described in the _Deutsche Turn-Zeitung_ for January, 1860 (V: 8).

[159] In “The Life of William Morris” (London and New York: Longmans, Green & Co., 1899).

[160] In “Memorials of Edward Burne-Jones” (New York, The Macmillan Co., 1904).

[161] “Mrs. Maclaren was the daughter of D. A. Talboys, the Oxford printer, and under her father had been trained as a first-rate classical scholar” (Charles L. Graves, in “Life and Letters of Alexander Macmillan,” London, Macmillan & Co., 1910).

[162] The first step in the artistic life of Burne-Jones, she says, “was a series of pen-and-ink designs made at the suggestion of his friend Mr. Maclaren. These drawings were intended for illustrations to a volume of Ballads upon the Fairy Mythology of Europe, which Maclaren had written with the intention of publishing immediately.... The scheme included a frontispiece, title-page, illustrations and ornamental letters. They were begun early in 1854 and carried on for about two years and a half, and in the series may be traced his development from the time that he first went into the Wytham woods to draw leaves and branches until the day when he discovered that the human form was the alphabet of the language which he was henceforth to use.” The frontispiece, title-page, and a tail-piece on page 279 are all that appear in “The Fairy Family: a Series of Ballads and Metrical Tales Illustrating the Fairy Mythology of Europe,” which Maclaren published anonymously in 1857 (London: Longman, Brown, Green, Longmans, and Roberts). A second edition, published in 1873, bears Maclaren’s name on the title-page and is dedicated “To my daughter Mabel” (London, Macmillan & Co.).

[163] In his “System of Physical Education,” 1869, pp. 72, 73 and 93.

[164] Maclaren’s “system of measurements to determine the rate of growth and development” is given in Appendix H of the volume just quoted. Appendix E contains a “table of measurements of first detachment of non-commissioned officers selected to be qualified as military gymnastic instructors,” showing increases for the seven and a half months between September 11 and April 30; and a similar table of measurements of the second detachment, with increases for the period extending from October 27, 1862, to July 12, 1863.

[165] In September of 1864 Mrs. Maclaren opened at Summertown a private school intended to prepare boys for the (endowed) public schools. The venture proved a very successful one from the start, and was continued by her son-in-law. Alexander Macmillan, one of the founders of the publishing house which bears that name, had made the acquaintance of the Maclarens in the summer of 1864, and by his efforts did much to enlist the interest of influential patrons, in addition to sending his own son George and two nephews. See pp. 225-227 in the “Life and Letters of Alexander Macmillan,” by Charles L. Graves (London, Macmillan & Co., 1910).

[166] London, Macmillan & Co., 1866.

[167] London, Macmillan & Co.

[168] Vol. =7=, 397-399, 418-421, and 458-460 (March 27, April 3 and 17, 1873).

[169] Oxford, Clarendon Press. A second edition, unchanged, was issued the year after the author’s death (Oxford, 1885), and a third, reëdited and enlarged by his son, Wallace Maclaren, appeared ten years later (Oxford, 1895).

[170] “The system which I advocate is the result of my professional life—developed and matured by every means which I could bring to bear upon it by physiological theory or practical test. The period of its preparation extends over nearly a quarter of a century, for during that period I have been, as it were, standing in the midst of a living stream of men and boys flowing in from every school, public and private, in the kingdom; youths possessing every degree of physical power—presenting every phase of physical weakness. On these, _by_ these, every exercise in the system has been tested; its nature, its character defined and its results ascertained, its place in the progressive courses slowly and carefully determined” (pp. 89 and 90).

[171] Born in Kassa (Kaschau), Hungary, in 1818; studied in Vienna and Pavia, and won his medical degree at the latter university in 1839; took part in the Hungarian War of Independence (1849), and afterwards made his way to England as a political refugee. See _Tidskrift i Gymnastik_ =2=, 225-235 and =9=, 293-297.

[172] Born in Skåne, south Sweden, October 7, 1849; graduated from the Central Institute of Gymnastics in Stockholm in 1881; died July 29, 1915.

[173] See _Tidskrift i Gymnastik_, =6=, 687-694 (1908).

[174] London, H. M. Stationery Office.

[175] London, H. M. Stationery Office.

[176] Report of the Royal Commission on Physical Training (Scotland), presented to both Houses of Parliament by Command of His Majesty. Edinburgh, H. M. Stationery.

[177] London, H. M. Stationery Office.

[178] Ibid.

[179] The Syllabus of Physical Exercises for Schools. 1909. London, as above.