ately old French mill, built, towered, and gabled, of fine grey stone;
and the image of them brings up in my mind, with the draught and foam of
the weir and the glassiness of the backwater, and the whirr of the
horse-ferry's ropes, that some of the most delightful moments which
one's bicycle can give, are those when the bicycle is resting against a
boat's side (once also in Exmouth harbour); or chained to an old
lych-gate; or, as I remarked about my Campagna ride, taking its rest
also and indulging its musings.

I have alluded to the variety and alteration of pace which we can, and
should, get while bicycling. Skimming rapidly over certain portions of
the road--sordid suburbs, for instance--and precipitating our course to
the points where we slacken and linger, the body keeps step with the
spirit; and actuality forestalls, in a way, the selection by memory;
significance, pleasantness, choice, not brute outer circumstance,
determining the accentuation, the phrasing (in musical sense) of our
life. For life must be _phrased_, lest it become mere jabber, without
pleasure or lesson. Indeed, one may say that if games teach a man to
stand a reverse or snatch an opportunity, so bicycling might afford an
instructive analogy of what things to notice, to talk about and remember
on life's high-roads and lanes; and what others, whizzing past on scarce
skimming wheel, to reject from memory and feeling.

The bicycle, in this particular, like the imagination it so well
symbolizes, is a great liberator, freeing us from dwelling among
ugliness and rubbish. It gives a foretaste of freedom of the spirit,
reducing mankind to the only real and final inequality: inequality in
the power of appreciating and enjoying. The poor clerk, or
schoolmistress, or obscure individual from Grub Street can, with its
help, get as much variety and pleasure out of a hundred miles' circuit
as more fortunate persons from unlimited globetrotting. Nay, the
fortunate person can on a bicycle get rid of the lumber and litter which
constitutes so large a proportion of the gifts of Fortune. For the
things _one has to have_, let alone the things _one has to do_ (in
deference to butler and lady's-maid, high priests of fitness), are as
well left behind, if only occasionally. And among such doubtful gifts of
fortune is surely the thought of the many people employed in helping one
to do nothing whatever. It spoils the Campagna, for instance, to have a
brougham, with coachm