FOOTPATHS 211 
said of perfection, must be sought not by fly- 
ing, but by walking, “ Perfectionis via non per- 
volanda sed perambulanda.” The thoughts 
that the railway affords us are dusty thoughts ; 
we ask the news, read the journals, question 
our neighbor, and wish to know what is going 
on because we are a part of it. It is only in 
the footpath that our minds, like our bodies, 
move slowly, and we traverse thought, like 
space, with a patient thoroughness. Rousseau 
said that he had never experienced so much, 
lived so truly, and been so wholly himself, as 
during his travels on foot. 
What can Hawthorne mean by saying in his 
English diary that “an American would never 
understand the passage in Bunyan about Chris- 
tian and Hopeful going astray along a bypath 
into the grounds of Giant Despair, from there 
being no stiles and bypaths in our country”? 
So much of the charm of American pedestrian- 
ism lies in the bypaths! For instance, the 
whole interior of Cape Ann, beyond Gloucester, 
is a continuous woodland, with granite ledges 
everywhere cropping out, around which the 
high-road winds, following the curving and 
indented line of the sea, and dotted here and 
there with fishing hamlets. This whole interior 
is traversed by a network of footpaths, rarely 
passable for a wagon, and not always for a 
