568 INTERNATIONAL CONGRESS OF EDUCATION. 
school boards, and when the superintendent also began personally to 
inspect the instruction at the schools, and thus found out that the state 
of gymnastics in many places wus very deficient, the displeasure at last 
rave itself vent in a bill presented in the House of Commons, petitioning 
shat ‘it might be left to the different school boards to decide whether 
cymnastic instruction was to to be given or suspended for a while. The 
bill did not pass, however, yet several authorities did not look upon gym- 
nastics with favor for some years after. 
When La Cour in 1870 resigned his office as gymnasium superintendent 
she place was not again filled, but the office of “inspector” was substituted. 
The inspector has nothing whatever to do with the army, but has only 
che charge of institutions belonging under the Department of Public 
[nstruction, and has aiso to be a member of the board of examiners. This 
office has been filled by Colonel John Theodore Wegener, Chamberlain, 
and afterward by the former principal of the military gymnasium, 
Colonel Julius Amsinck. The latter is the author of a new text-book 
authorized for the use of schools. 
With few exceptions, only boys were taught gymnastics ; but during the 
years 1860 to 1870 the physician, Professor A. G. Drachmann, made an 
attempt to introduce Laisne’s French gymnastics into girls’ schools, only 
succeeding, however, in very few cases in Copenhagen. 
Favorable to the gymnastic movement, however, were the rifle corps 
formed by young men in 1861. Already, four years after, these corps had 
decome popular, and everywhere in the country new ones were formed. 
Of course they aimed principally at making the young men good shots, 
out bodily exercises were also on the programme, and as gymnastic exer- 
cises were performed at their public exhibitions, the interest for them 
increased. Division captains were trained for teachers of gymnastics by 
she military teachers, and Mr. Amsinck’s new manual was published as a 
sext-book for rifle corps. In these, and independent of them, gymnastic 
societies were formed that tried to surpass each other at the public exhi- 
sitions that have been given since 1878. 
Through voluntary contributions gymnasiums were erected in the coun- 
ry, as many as thirty in the same district. At present there are about two 
aundred and fifty halls and seven thousand to eight thousand growr-up mem- 
bers in these societies. The increasing interest, spreading from adults 
to children, was also furthered by the ‘‘people’s high-schools,” attended 
‘n the winter by young men, and in the summer by girls belonging to the 
veasant class. Almost every high-school had its own gymnasium, and 
here it was that the Swedish gymnastics was first introduced. They sent 
for lady teachers from the Central Gymnasium at Stockholm, and young 
men from the high-schools went to Sweden to get acquainted with the new 
system. The high-schools of Vallekilde and Askov especially distin- 
guished themselves. A teacher of gymnastics at the former school, Mr.