ENGLISH EXPERIENCE WITH PLAYGROUNDS. . 641 
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association, from the association to the committee, and from the com- 
mittee to the supreme court, the governing board of the college. Athletic 
nterests would then be regulated by the men best fitted by inclination, 
oxperience, and ability, to check abuses and encourage new and better 
deas, and the chaos of conflicting interests and authorities, now unfor- 
sunately too prevalent, would be replaced by the cosmos of harmony and 
srder. 
2 
ENGLISH EXPERIENCE IN PROVIDING THE POOR OF 
CITIES WITH PARKS, GARDENS, GYMNASIA, AND 
PLAYGROUNDS. 
BY THE RIGHT HONORABLE THE EARL OF MEATH., LONDON. 
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F1rTY years ago the world, comparatively speaking, did not contain 
many large cities. It is only within the memory of living men that the 
oreat exodus has set in from the country to the town. In former ages, no 
doubt, the city always exercised a certain fascination over the bucolic 
mind ; but locomotion was difficult and expensive, social custom and laws 
antagonistic and often almost prohibitive to migration, especially in the 
case of the peasant, and the city fenced itself round not only with material 
walls, but with prohibitive tariffs and with regulations which rendered all 
ingress and egress troublesome, and change of residence a painful labor 
rather than a pleasure. The attractions of the city, too, were not so 
marked as to outweigh the disadvantages attending residence within its 
walls. In the town work was often scarce, food dear, dirt ubiquitous, 
disease endemic and sometimes rampant, and life and property not infre- 
quently less secure than in the country, which did not offer to the idle and 
evil-disposed so easy and rich a prey. 
[t was not until steam power superseded hand labor, till factories arose 
requiring the daily cooperation of numbers of human beings to carry on 
she work, till delicate machinery needing the constant attention and repair 
of skilled artisans came into use, till encompassing walls were razed, octroi 
duties and regulations either abolished or modified, locomotion made easy 
and inexpensive, and city life comparatively safe, healthy, and agreeable, 
that population began to leave the country and settle in the town, attracted 
by work, high wages, and the brighter and more varied aspects which life 
assumes in the midst of crowds. As towns improved in their sanitation, 
in their outer beauty and inner life, so wealth was attracted, and labor 
followed in the footsteps of its patron, until by degrees grew up the city 
as we know it, where may be found all that can make existence agreeable 
to the rich man, who, when he is satiated with the pleasures of the city, 
may retire to the country and enjoy (all the more for the contrast) the 
peace, the freshness, and the beauty of nature. But those masses of