54 GLAUCUS ; OR, 



meddle miich with them. And yet the young man 

 who has had no substitute for such amusements, 

 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 pos- 

 sible for us of the British Isles. But a walk without 

 an object, unless in the most lovely and novel of 

 scenery, is a poor exercise ; and as a recreation, 

 utterly nil. I never knew two young lads go 

 out for a " constitutional," who did not, if they 

 were commonplace youths, gossip the whole way 

 about things better left unspoken ; or, if they were 

 clever ones, fall on arguing and brainsbeating on 

 politics or metaphysics from the moment they left 

 the door, and return with their wits even more 

 heated and tired than they were when they set out. 

 I cannot help fancying that Milton made a mis- 

 take in a certain celebrated passage ; and that it 

 was not " sitting on a hill apart," but tramping four 



