Year: 1874

4


The great college race which will take place
at Saratoga to-day is already an event SO
national in its Importance as to justify the
unusual space we give this morning to a mar
rative Of what has been done in the way of
preparation and what will probably be done
to-day in the final burst of achievement and
victory. Even as o contribution to public
amusement this contest deserves all the
space we give to its history. But there
is q graver and more instructive side
of the picture, and to this we will devote
such comments as seem appropriate to the
occasion. What we deem it most important
to remark on is the value of such contests in
their influence on education and national
character. Now that they are in fair way to
grow into a permanent national usage it is
proper to estimate the beneficial consequences
likely to result from them when they shall
have passed beyond their present infancy and
have reached the ripe development and more
perfect organization which time and popular
favor are certain to bring. We regard it as
good step forward that the college regatta has
been transferred to one of the great centres of
summer fashion. By lifting it out of
New England provincialism and ex-
hibiting it at a point where repre-
sentatives of the most intelligent and
influential classes are wont to assemble, at this
country, an important advantage is gained in
the standing and social respectability of the
spectators, and greater ecl4 and lustre are
shed upon the occasion. The removal of the
regatta to Saratoga, in spite of a vehement but
narrow-minded opposition, is therefore great
gain to the cause of athletic sports


We are becoming wealthy nation, and the
tendency of wealth to selt-indulgent luxury is
perhaps more strongly marked in this country
than in any other. Luxury tends to effem-
macy, and efeminacy to cowardice, pusil-
lanimity, triviality and the loss of a robust,
manly national spirit. There are various rea-
sons why we may slide down this dangerous
declivity more easily than the nations of the
Old World. In the absence Of nobility and
hereditary family pride wealth is our only title
to social distinction, and great wealth is so
often acquired by unoultivated vulgar people,
who can convert it to no better use than at
tempts to outvie and outshine one another in
profuse expense and tawdry display, that we
are in greater peril than any other people ever
were Of sinking the manliness of our prosper
GUS classes in passion for vulgar ostenta-
ton. These classes furnish large share of
the students in our older and more respectable
colleges, and these young men can be rescued
from the danger of becoming effeminate syba-
rites only by the redeeming influence of
strenuous, hardy sports, which cultivate the
robust side of their nature We pass over the
great advantage of athletic amusements on the
score of health, important as that view is,
because vigor of character, manliness and
courage are incomparably superior to any
merely sanitary considerations. Health is, in
deed, an inestimable blessing and the indis-
pensable condition for enjoying all others;
but strength and vigor of character, even in a
sickly body, deserve and command so much
more respect that we prefer to rest our argu-
ment on the higher endowment.


We will not go back to the renowned intel
! lectual nation with whose history and litera-
ture the students of our colleges are made


familiar by their classical studies They all
know how large part physical culture played


in Greek education. The brightest and most
Intellectual people that then existed gave the
most sedulous attention to physical training.
The great Grecian games ranked among the
most important of their national institutions


There is nothing in the severe discipline by
which modern theatrical performers and
opera singers are prepared for appearance be-
fore the public which can compare with the
exercises which the competitors in the Gre
clan national games were required to go
through. In addition to the magnificent char
lot and horse races, there were competitors
stripped naked as runners, wrestlers, boxers
or pan-kraists, after having submitted to the ex-
treme fatigue of long previous training The
fact that emulation in these manly physical
contests went hand-in-hand with intellectual
culture, and that the most mentally gifted
of ancient nations surpassed all other in feats
of bodily agility, refutes and explodes the
shallow notion that the physical sports of our
colleges may interfere with and impede their
literary studies. But we will not dwell on
this consideration, important as it is There
are gifts which outrank intellectual prof.
cheney Manliness of character, strenuous
vigor OF will indomitable force of purpose,
unwillingness to be outdone in any honorable
effort, are the great and commanding qualities
of perfectly developed manhood, and it is
more important to cultivate these than any
others. And they are most necessary in the
cultivated classes, whose intellectual ascend.
ancy makes them the natural guides of public
opinion and the leaders of the people in all
important emergencies. What an immense
difference it makes in the policy and destiny
Palmerston or Disraeli, are at the head of