The Game of Foot-Ball.

The following is taken from an article in the Boston Evening Journal:-

"It is a thousand pities that the accidents connected with the game of foot-ball are of such a nature as to force themselves upon the attention of the spectator, and to leave behind an impression of roughness and brutality which is not borne out by facts. The casualties are usually of a sort painful for the moment, but not grave; for one serious accident, such as befell Captain Holden last week, there could probably be counted a larger proportion in base ball, in lacrosse, or even in the usual course of regular gymnastic training. But no comment is too harsh to represent the ordinary estimate of foot-ball. It is "brutal," it is "ungentlemanly," it is "closely allied to the manners of the prize ring," it is "barbaric," it is "dangerous;" and no representation of friend or lover is strong enough to do away with the rudeness of impression which a first sight of its tremendous activity conveys to the unused intelligence of one beholding it for the first time.

"To those who know the magnificent vitality which this game builds up, or who saw, for instance, the splendid physique of those young athletes who stood in confronting lines last Saturday on the field at Harvard, the game of football stands for much more than this show of roughness. The popular notion of the game founded upon the sensational reports of the daily papers and the real game as it progresses before the eyes of the spectators are two different things. It would be amusing, if it were not interfering with the proper understanding of a vital subject, to read, within a day or two, in the columns of one of our city journals, which has over and over again devoted half a page to minute and brutal accounts of a prize fight, an indignant paragraph on the "barbarism" and "run-a-muck culture" of the Harvard-Princeton game. It declares: "The fierce tumult of young passins, the battered features, the contused limbs, the broken bones, the sprains and welts, and gashes, and bloodstains that made the record of last Saturday's football contest over at Cambridge are enough to fill the thoughts of one who reads them with mingled horror and disgust." Doubtless it would be enough if such a record ever existed outside the imagination of a sensational reporter.

"Ordinary people saw a magnificent exhibition of cultivated strength and beautiful daring, with very few and very slight casualities, except in a single instance; they saw a dash and courage and enthusiasm that made one think better of the mortal part of human nature; and in the end a group of eager, flushed, panting young men, exhausted somewhat, of course, with such tremendous physical effort, but bright of eye, clear of voice, and as fine to look upon, in spite of awkward garb, as any heroic figures of triumphant Greek athletes.

"With the admirable article upon football which appeared in the Century a few months since, and the essays of Dr. Sargent upon physical culture in Scribner later, there is hardly an excuse now for the prejudiced and offensive view of the game which is taken by people in general-people, too, who have rarely, if ever, seen an exhibition, but who form their opinion from heresay. There is danger, no doubt, of minor hurts as there is in everything which enters into the domain of athletics; there is danger, remotely, of serious accident as there is likewise in the most simple forms of gymnastic exercises. But for dash and vigor and the highest sense of physical perfection which it is probably ever allowed the mortal frame to know; for the development of manliness in the sense of stubborn and strenuous effort; for wholesome and innocent use of the fire and sinew of youth, in the fresh air, under the clear sky of heaven; animated by loyal purpose, and sparing no passing pang for the furtherance of a desired object-there is nothing in the whole range of manly training which can equal it, the ends it accomplishes or the methods of reaching them. We have not yet any too much enthusiasm over physical culture. The work of those young fellows on Saturday, lifting a decorous mass of 6000 cold American onlookers into a crowd of passionate enthusiasts, forgetting all the forced and frigid rules of conventional mannerism, in good, hearty, honest out bursts of delight, is not outside the missionary spirit. It helped to maugurate or to increase among so many, at least, a better understanding of what the body can reach in fleetness, in dexterity, in strength and in endurance; and in spite of the shock to fastidiousness of a little bruising and a little dust, and a very little blood, it gave a glimpse of the possibilities of the corporeal human nature, which was as beautiful as it was new."