THE WONDERS OF THE SHORE. 53 
have become impossible for the greater number: 
and athletic exercises are now, in England at least, 
becoming more and more artificialized and expensive; 
and are confined more and more—with the honour- 
able exception of the football games in Battersea 
Park—to our Public Schools and the two elder 
Universities. All honour, meanwhile, to the Volun- 
teer movement, and its moral as well as its physical 
effects. But it is only a comparatively few of the 
very sturdiest who are likely to become effective 
Volunteers, and so really gain the benefits of learn- 
ing to be soldiers. And yet the young man who 
has had no substitute for such occupations will 
cut but a sorry figure in Australia, Canada, or 
India; and if he stays at home, will spend many 
a pound in doctors’ bills, which could have been 
better employed elsewhere. “Taking a walk’”— 
as one would take a pill or a draught—seems 
likely soon to become the only form of outdoor 
existence possible for too many inhabitants of the 
British Isles. But a walk without an object, unless 
in the most lovely and novel of scenery, is a poor 
