BATHING.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 134, 16 October 1868, Page 3

BATHING.

(From the London Review.') When moralists, and clergymen, and poets, write, and talk, and sing idiotic nonsense about the peaceful and happy days of childhood, they forgst castor oil, lost knives, tyrannical beatings, and the thousand ills and miseries much more keenly felt than it is possible for manhood to feel its ills and miseries. And, above all, they forget compulsory bathing; thinking of which, one is almost forced to regret that childhood, as well as manhood, has not the alternative of deliberate suicide. But the compulsion of tradition, in the matter of bathing, does not always cease with childhood. True, people having some slight regard for the effect of the human knuckles on the human nose, do not attempt to plunge a man into the sea against his will. But the man himself has his sensations and reason over-mastered by the galling force of heredi tary sentiment and belief. Of the innumerable persons who bathe regularly, it may be safely said that a large proportion do so in direct defiance of those warnings which nature gives to him who interferes with her proper action. They h-.aron every hand of theimmense advantages of bathing ; they know that cleanliness is next to godliness ; they are told that among savages, those tribes which live on the coast and are constantly in the water are the healthiest (though this is in direct contradiction to fact); and so, quite irrespective of the immediate result it may have upon them, they persist in plunging themselves into the cold sea, and walking home through the hot sunlight with wet hair and unsteady legs. What follows ? The victim of false reasoning enters the house and sits down, his face becoming of a dull sea-green ; lassitude overtakes him, and he throws himself upon a couch, where he half dozes for an hour or so ; he rises with a giddy head, a sqeamish stomach, and an irritable temper. "Sea-bathing is a capital thing, sir," he will tell you, sententiously ; " a capital thing, but it must be persevered in. At first, its effects may not be very pleasant ; but in time it comes to be most enjoyable, and the benefit of it is simply incalculable. You be ome as strong as a sea-horse, sir ; as strong as a seahorse." It is impossible to say whether you do or do not become as strong as a sea-horse is discovered and stated ; but it may safely be asserted that the bent fits of sea-bathing, if they consist in giving you a green face and depriving you of any appetite for dinner, are not, on the whole, to be coveted. Of course, no one will deny that sea-bathing is of great advantage to those whose constitutions are of a kind to withstand its other effects. It may even be said that the majority of persons in good health, with a sufficiently strong circulation, are benefitted by sea-bathing But tho reders's circle of acquaintance must be limited if he does not include at least one or two men and women who persistently, from year to year, go down to the sea-oast, and there, in defiance of those sensations which are an accurate index to the effects of any particular exercise upon the system, go daily into the salt-water, whether they like it or not. They sacrifice themselves to their indiscriminate application of an otherwise excellent theory. Not content with that, they are invariably eager to proselytise. While they still shiver from the effects of their dip, while their fingers are still cold and blue, and their cheeks sea-green, they will break forth into rhapsodies over the enjoyment of the morning bath in the sea. In those vivid, almost poetic, descriptions, they forget the cramped toes, the giddy-head, the choking, rapid pulsations they have just encountered; one would take them to be so many Leandera, with the endurance of a Barclay, and the language of a Michelet. Nor are the moral effects of sea-bathing, as seen in most people, to be admired. The man who comes into breakfast after having walked half a dozen miles round the shore and taken his bath in some half-sheltered bay, is sure to exhibit an unbearable amount of self-conscious virtue. He talks as though his plunge into cold water had given him some divine right to settle, according to his own fashion, every question which may arise in morals, politics, or religion. Worst of all, he exhibits compassion. He is, after all, nothing but an ajsthetic Philistine. His stupid prejudices become idealised into a series of infallible maxims ; he does not seek to back his argument with fists, but with the moral influence derivable from a thin incrustation of saline matter over his skin. The physical effects of sea bathing, good and bad, the community at large might bear ; the moral results of it are insufferable. As to inland bathing, it must be confessed that this is a luxury which ought to be put further wiihin the reath of at least those who live along the banks of rivers. We have not in England, so far as we kuow, any of those floating bathing-establishments in use on the rivers of other countries. Among us, if a man wishes to avoid the cramped convenience and the occasional awkwardness of his own bath-room, he is forced to go skulking along the banksof the nearest river at an early hour of the morning, to find a pool or creek, where he may jump in without shocking the eyes of all sorts of people and being written about to the Times. He is haunted by the dread of discovering a couple of elderly maiden ladies in the horizon, of having his clothes stolen, and of a hundred other scarcely defined contingencies. In any case, a bath in the river is impossible at the very time when one, especially in summer,

most wishes to bathe— that is to say, in the heat of the forenoon. If you are on the banks of the Rhine, or the Seine, or the Moldan, you can step down to one of the floating bathing-houses, pay a few pence, and plunge at once into the cool river without danger of being Been by anyone. Whether there would be much inducement for people to frequent euch institutions, if they were placed on the Thames in the neighbourhood of Kew, or Richmond, or Twickenham, we cannot say; but we believe the river is supposed to be much dirtier around those places" than it really is. As a matter of fact, men do bathe in the Thames at these points when they have the chance; and, were there bathing houses erected, they would obviate the necessity of the bathers wading into the mud, and also of occasionally annoying the residents in the neighbourhood. It is desirable that at the larger watering-places, public bathing-houses should be erected and offered at a cheap rate, so that the prohibitions and regulations with regard to bathing in the vicinity of houses might be increased and enforced with somewhat more justice. Many people have a positive mania for bathing ; and there is no reason why they should not be permitted to enjoy themselves in that way, within proper bounds.