FOOT-PATHS. 



AN intelligent English woman, spending a few 

 years in this country with her family, says that one 

 of her serious disappointments is that she finds it 

 utterly impossible to enjoy nature here as she can 

 at home ; so much nature as we have and yet no 

 way of getting at it ; no paths, or by-ways, or stiles, 

 or foot-bridges, no provision for the pedestrian out- 

 side of the public road. One would think the peo- 

 ple had no feet and legs in this country, or else did 

 not know how to use them. Last summer she spent 

 the season near a small rural village in the valley 

 of the Connecticut, but it seemed as if she had not 

 been in the country ; she could not come at the 

 landscape, she could not reach a wood or a hill or a 

 oretty nook anywhere without being a trespasser, or 

 getting entangled in swamps or in fields of grass and 

 grain, or having her course blocked by a high and 

 difficult fence ; no private ways, no grassy lanes, no- 

 jody walking in the fields or woods, nobody walking 

 anywhere for pleasure, but everybody in carriages or 

 wagons. 



She was stopping a mile from the village and 

 every day used to wa/k down to the post-office fo 



