suppose that the bicycle has given, and gives, as much pleasure to
fairly active people as any machine ever invented. I must have been
one of the first cyclists in England, as my experience dates from the
days when bicycles were first imported from France. The high bicycle
appeared later, but the earlier machines were about the height of the
present safety, with light wooden wheels and iron tyres. The safety,
with pneumatic tyres, did not arrive till nearly thirty years later,
and it was the latter invention that brought about the popularity of
cycling.

The difference between cycling and walking has been stated thus:

"When a man walks a mile he takes on an average 2,263 steps,
lifting the weight of his body with each step. When he rides
a bicycle of the average gear he covers a mile with the
equivalent of 627 steps, bears no burden, and covers the
same distance in less than one third of the time."

People constantly tell me that cycling is all very well for getting
from place to place, but otherwise they don't care about it, which I
can only account for by supposing that they find it a labour more or
less irksome, or that they have never developed their perceptive
faculties, and have no real sympathy with the life of woods and fields
or the spirit of the ancient farms and villages.

Cycling to me is a very easy and pleasant exercise, but it is far more
than that; it is like passing through an endless picture-gallery
filled with masterpieces of form and colour. The roads of England not
only present these delights to the physical sense, but they stir the
imagination with historic visions from the earliest times. There are
the ancient camps, now silent and deserted, which become at the
bidding of fancy peopled with the unkempt and savage British, and
later with their well-disciplined and well-equipped Roman conquerers:
archers and men in armour appear; pilgrims' processions such as we
read of in Chaucer; knights and ladies on their stately steeds. There
are the ghosts of royal progresses, kings and queens, and wonderful
pageantry gorgeous in array; decorously ambling cardinals and abbots
with their trains of servitors; hawking parties with hawks and
attendants; soldiers after Sedgemoor in pursuit of Monmouth's
ill-fated followers; George IV. and his gay courtiers on the Brighton
road; beaux and beauties in their well-appointed carriages bound for
Tunbridge Wells, Cheltenham, or Bath; splendid