or a thousand. Why, these calves of
ours would look queer, we confess, on the legs of a Leith porter; but
even in our prime they were none of your big vulgar calves, but they
handled like iron--now more like butter. There is still a spring in our
instep; and our knees, sometimes shaky, are to-day knit as Pan's and
neat as Apollo's. Poet we may not be, but Pedestrian we are; with
Wordsworth we could not walk along imaginative heights, but, if not
grievously out of our reckoning; on the turnpike road we could keep pace
with Captain Barclay for a short distance--say from Dundee to Aberdeen.

Oh! Gemini! but we are in high spirits. Yes--delights there indeed are,
which none but pedestrians know. Much--all depends on the character of
the wanderer; he must have known what it is to commune with his own
thoughts and feelings, and be satisfied with them even as with the
converse of a chosen friend. Not that he must always, in the solitudes
that await him, be in a meditative mood, for ideas and emotions will of
themselves arise, and he will only have to enjoy the pleasures which his
own being spontaneously affords. It would indeed be a hopeless thing, if
we were always to be on the stretch for happiness. Intellect,
Imagination, and Feeling, all work of their own free-will, and not at
the order of any taskmaster. A rill soon becomes a stream--a stream a
river--a river a loch--and a loch a sea. So it is with the current
within the spirit. It carries us along, without either oar or sail,
increasing in depth, breadth, and swiftness, yet all the while the easy
work of our own wonderful minds. While we seem only to see or hear, we
are thinking and feeling far beyond the mere notices given by the
senses; and years afterwards we find that we have been laying up
treasures, in our most heedless moments, of imagery, and connecting
together trains of thought that arise in startling beauty, almost
without cause or any traceable origin. The Pedestrian, too, must not
only love his own society, but the society of any other human beings, if
blameless and not impure, among whom his lot may for a short season be
cast. He must rejoice in all the forms and shows of life, however simple
they may be, however humble, however low; and be able to find food for
his thoughts beside the ingle of the loneliest hut, where the inmates
sit with few words, and will rather be spoken to than speak to the
stranger. In such places he will be delighted--perhaps surpris