182 PEPACTON 



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 roadbed 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 land- 

 scape 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 gentleness and humility. But 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 natural and wholesome impulse. 

 It is a prostitution of the noble pastime. 



It is not the walking merely, it is keeping your- 

 self in tune for a walk, in the spiritual and bodily 

 condition in which you can find entertainment and 



