SWIMMING.
(To the Editor.)
The practice of swimming is so pleasurable, and so conducive to health, and a knowledge of the art of such evident utility, that it is strange that in sea-girt England we should possess no treatise on the subject at all commensurate with its importance. There is a large work on the subject by Bernardi, a Neapolitan, too voluminous and discursive for general use; and by being in the Italian language, a sealed book to the English reader. A translation of this work into German was reviewed in the 67th number of the Quarterly Review; and after the observations made by the reviewer, it was really to be hoped that we should before now have possessed some valuable translation of Bernardi.
Great numbers are deterred from attempting to acquire the art of swimming by the time which they know must be consumed, under the present system of learning, before the exercise can be so far learned as to make it a pleasant recreation.
The substance of Bernardi's practical theory appears to be, the "adapting the habitual movements of the body on land to its progress in water;" and it is attested by a commission, appointed by the Neapolitan Government to investigate Bernardi's system, that "the new method is sooner learnt than the old, to the extent of advancing a pupil in one day as far as a month's instruction according to the old plan."
My reason for addressing you is, that the appearance of this communication, or a remark of your own in your widely diffused periodical, may possibly meet the eye of some individual willing and able to clothe Bernardi in an English garb.