THE DOWNS in 



of the handiwork of gangs of mighty navigators in 

 primeval days when giants were yet in the land. But 

 once set yourself to breast their steep slopes, and your 

 heart begins to beat with appreciation, fast as it throbs 

 to the unwonted efforts. It is a sunny, sultry day, 

 when on the Dutch landscape at their feet, you leave 

 all nature gasping in the stirless air in a dreamy 

 langour. You have painfully dragged your burden of 

 melting flesh to their base, and your spirits sink as you 

 despairingly measure the distance that divides you 

 from their summit. Excelsior ! and resolution brings 

 its own reward, and a speedy one. The air grows 

 lighter, cooler, buoyant, exhilarating, as you approach 

 the ridge. After gulping it down in liberal draughts, 

 you appreciate Mark Tapley's feelings on his first 

 experience of a sherry cobbler, and become, in all 

 particulars worth mentioning, a different man. You 

 step out, casting off the dead weight you were carrying, 

 and can almost imagine that, like Christian in the 

 "Pilgrim's Progress," you ought to see a visible burden 

 of material infirmities roll down the hill behind you. 

 Nowhere else, we venture to say, does so trifling an 

 exertion bring you so near to immortality. The 

 air comes breathing round you with a strange rush 

 of old associations of kindred pleasures pleasures 

 that you bought at a far greater expenditure of toil. 

 Again you are slipping along the loftiest heather slopes 

 of some savage Highland moor, and the shots fired 

 from muzzle and breech-loader in a succession of 

 vanished Augusts are waking the slumbering echoes 



