ded with a strong
back, a strong breast, strong thighs, strong legs, and strong feet. With
a strong stomach alone--yea, even the stomach of a horse--a man will
make but a sorry Pedestrian. The Doctor, however, speedily redeems
himself by saying admirably well, "that nutrition does not depend more
on the state of the stomach, or of what we put into it, than it does on
the stimulus given to the system by exercise, which alone can produce
that perfect circulation of the blood which is required to throw off
superfluous secretions, and give the absorbents an appetite to suck up
fresh materials. This requires the action of every petty artery, and of
the minutest ramifications of every nerve and fibre in our body." Thus,
he remarks, a little further on, by way of illustration, "that a man,
suffering under a fit of the vapours, after half an hour's brisk
ambulation, will often find that he has walked it off, and that the
action of the body has exonerated the mind."

The Doctor warms as he walks--and is very near leaping over the fence of
Political Economy. "Providence, he remarks, furnishes materials, but
expects that we should work them up for ourselves. The earth must be
laboured before it gives its increase, and when it is forced to produce
its several products, how many hands must they pass through before they
are fit for use! Manufactures, trade, and agriculture, naturally employ
more than nineteen persons out of twenty; and as for those who are, by
the condition in which they are born, exempted from work, they are more
miserable than the rest of mankind, unless they daily and duly employ
themselves in that VOLUNTARY LABOUR WHICH GOES BY THE NAME OF EXERCISE."
Inflexible justice, however, forces us to say, that although the Doctor
throws a fine philosophical light over the most general principles of
walking, as they are involved in "that voluntary labour which goes by
the name of exercise," yet he falls into frequent and fatal error when
he descends into the particulars of the practice of pedestrianism. Thus,
he says, that no person should sit down to a hearty meal immediately
after any great exertion, either of mind or body--that is, one might
say, after a few miles of Plinlimmon, or a few pages of the Principia.
Let the man, quoth he, "who comes home fatigued by bodily exertion,
especially if he feel heated by it, throw his legs upon a chair, and
remain quite tranquil and composed, that the energy which has been
disperse