"Let us turn to another branch of athletics, in which certainly those who follow it have no better means for its use than their predecessors. I allude to walking. Twenty years ago a man who could walk a mile in eight minutes was considered to do a very fair performance; but now, unless he could cover the distance in considerably under seven minutes, he would have no chance whatever of winning any prize at any athletic meeting. I am quite aware that many of the last generation of walkers object to the present style in which it is accomplished, on the ground that it is really a disguised form of running, and very often I agree with them. But it is not so in all cases; and there are many scrupulously fair walkers who can hopelessly beat most times made a quarter of a century ago, even if they cannot equal those made by the semi-runners of the present day.

When we come to consider feats of strength and agility, and to compare as far as possible those performed now and in earlier times, the advantage seems to lie with the moderns. There are really no definite accounts of what the ancient Greeks and Romans were able to do. There are many mythical ones, and even when there are any that may possibly be statements of facts, there is nothing to gauge what they are really worth. We have a little more knowledge of what was done in the middle ages, but not much. For instance, King Teutobach of the Teutons is said to have vaulted over six horses standing side by side; and another king, Olaf Tryggesson of Norway, according to an old chronicle of that country, was stronger and more nimble than any man in his dominions. He could climb up the rock Smalserhorn and fix his shield on the top of it; he could walk round the outside of a boat upon oars, while the men were rowing; he could play with three darts, alternately throwing them in the air, and always kept two of them up, while he held the third in one of his hands; he was ambidexter, and could cast two darts at once, and he excelled all men of his time in shooting with the bow, and he had no equal in swimming,

Froissart relates a story that shows the hero of it to have certainly been very powerful, and it would be difficult to find a man of the present who could execute a similiar act, though I have no doubt he could be found. The story is as follows:

'On one Christmas day, the Earl of Foix, according to his usual custom, held a great feast, and after dyner he deperted out of the hall, and went up into a galarye of twenty-four stayres of heyght. It being exceedingly cold the Earl complained that the fire was not large enough, when a person named Ervalton of Spayne, went down stayers, and beneth in the court he saw a great many of asses laden with woode to serve the house, that he went and tooke one of the greatest asses with al the woode, and layde him on hys back, and went up al the stayrs into the galary, and dyd caste downe the asse with al the woode into the chimney, and the asse's fete upward, whereof the Earl of Foix had great joye, and so had all they that wer ther, and had mervele of his strength.'

There are many games and athletic exercises that are practised now which although considered modern inventions were in a different form in use among the ancients. Even lawn tennis, the most fashionable of them all, and the one which more than any other seems to have taken a permanent hold on the people of this country, appears to be merely a variation of a form of ball played by the Romans; one great difference being that with them the ball had always to be returned before it struck the ground - in fact, "volleyed." There is no very definite description of it, but it would seem that, although there was no actual net as now, there was practically an imaginary one; and at the present time the Italians play a game called Pallone, that is probably derived from the same source.

Further, a contest that within the last few years has had a place in the programme of most athletic meetings is even more directly one in which the ancients took part. The "tug-of-war" is quite a modern institution, but is very nearly the same as a Grecian trial of strength, which appears to have been arranged in two ways, in one of which the only difference between it and the present "tug-of-war" is that fewer persons took part in it, and that they stood up instead of partly sitting as they do now. In the other the rope was passed over an upper branch of a tree, or through a hole in a high post, and the competitors took hold of the rope, with their backs to the tree, and tried to pull up the opposite side.

Of course there is absolutely no means of judging of the relative powers of the ancients and the moderns in the "noble art of self-defence." That the ancients, especially the Greeks, did box, and that most savagely, we know. So far from using gloves to lessen the damaging effects of their blows, or even from using simply the power that nature and training had given to their bare fists, they increased this by tying strips of hard bulls hide round them when clinched, and sometimes even attached nails and lead buckles to these to make their blows more deadly. They also usually, but not always, fought continuously until one of the combatants gave in, "rounds" apparently not being to their taste. But although there seems to have been this savagery about the contests, it by no means follows that a "scientific boxer" of the present day would not be able to hold his own in one, if a trial were possible.

To return to the question; Are the athletes of the present superior to those of the past?

It certainly seems to me, from consideration of the various matters referred to, that our modern ones are decidedly physically stronger and capable of greater exertion, and also that, independently of that, they are able to obtain more result from their exertions than the ancients. The men of the present day, we know, are larger than they were in bygone years, and therefore they should be more powerful; for it is an acknowledged axiom in sport that, other things being equal, "a big one will always beat the little one." - Nineteenth Century.