ve the Rifle Corps movement. The other day a gallant little
band in my own immediate neighbourhood set out for an evening's march.
They were in capital spirits; they were dressed in their Sunday best;
they had a band playing at their head; a miscellaneous crowd, chiefly
juvenile, with a few occasional females behind, brought up the rear. A
deputy of the London Corporation and his brother formed part of the
devoted troop. Gaily and amidst cheers they marched from the bosoms of
their families, leaving "their girls behind them." On they went, up-hill
and down-hill, many a mile, amidst Hornsey's pleasant green lanes, till
at length the London deputy turned pale, and intimated--while his limbs
appeared to sink beneath him, and his whole body was bathed in
sweat--that he could stand it no longer. The spirit was willing, but the
flesh was weak. A halt was ordered--beer was sought for for the London
deputy, and with considerable difficulty they got the martial hero home.
Had that gallant man been a good pedestrian, would he not have scorned
the beer, and laughed at the idea of rest? Look at Charles Dickens--I am
sure he will forgive me the personality, as no harm is intended--why is
he ever genial, ever fresh--as superior to the crowd who imitate his
mannerism, but fail to catch his warm, sunny, human spirit, as the
Koh-i-noor to its glass counterfeit, but because no man in town walks
more than he? What a man for walking was the great Liston, foremost
operator of his age. The late Lord Suffield, who fought all the Lords,
including the bench of Bishops, in order to win emancipation for the
slave, was one of the most athletic men of his day. On one occasion he
ran a distance of ten miles before the Norwich mail as a casual frolic,
without any previous training, and he assured Sir George Stephen that he
never experienced any inconvenience from it. When we talk of a man being
weak on his pins, what does it imply but that he has been a rake, or a
sot, or a fool who has cultivated the pocket or the brain at the expense
of that machine, so fearfully and wonderfully made, we call man. The
machine is made to wear well, it is man's fault if it does not. The
pedestrian alone keeps his in good repair; our long livers have mostly
been great walkers. Taylor, the water-poet, says of old Parr--

"Good wholesome labour was his exercise,
Down with the lamb, and with the lark would rise,
In mire and toiling sweat he spent