204 FOOT-PATHS. 



do not take to lanes and to the seclusion of the fields, 

 We love to be upon the road, and to plant our 

 houses there, and to appear there mounted upon a 

 horse or seated in a wagon. It is to be distinctly 

 stated, however, that our public highways, with their 

 breadth and amplitude, their wide grassy margins, 

 their picturesque stone or rail fences, their outlooks, 

 and their general free and easy character, are far 

 more inviting to the pedestrian than the narrow lanes 

 and trenches that English highways for the most 

 part are. The road in England is always well kept, 

 the road-bed is often like a rock, but the traveler's 

 view is shut in by high hedges, and very frequently 

 he seems to be passing along a deep, nicely-graded 

 ditch. The open, broad landscape character of our 

 highways is quite unknown in that country. 



The absence of the paths and lanes is not so great 

 a matter, but the decay of the simplicity of manners 

 and of the habits of pedestrianism which this absence 

 implies is what I lament. The devil is in the horse 

 to make men proud and fast and ill-mannered ; only 

 when you go afoot do you grow in the grace of gen- 

 tleness and humility. Bu_t no good can come out of 

 this walking mania that is now sweeping over the 

 country, simply because it is a mania and not a nat- 

 ural and wholesome impulse. It is a prostitution of 

 v .he noble pastime. 



It is not the walking merely, it is keeping yourself 

 ia tune for a walk, in the spiritual and bodily condi- 

 tion in which you can find entertainment and exhila- 



