ersevering, never-ending enterprises. Our
expeditions are but tours, and come round again at evening to the old
hearth-side from which we set out. Half the walk is but retracing our
steps. We should go forth on the shortest walk, perchance, in the
spirit of undying adventure, never to return--prepared to send back
our embalmed hearts only as relics to our desolate kingdoms. If you are
ready to leave father and mother, and brother and sister, and wife
and child and friends, and never see them again--if you have paid your
debts, and made your will, and settled all your affairs, and are a free
man--then you are ready for a walk.

To come down to my own experience, my companion and I, for I sometimes
have a companion, take pleasure in fancying ourselves knights of a new,
or rather an old, order--not Equestrians or Chevaliers, not Ritters or
Riders, but Walkers, a still more ancient and honorable class, I trust.
The Chivalric and heroic spirit which once belonged to the Rider seems
now to reside in, or perchance to have subsided into, the Walker--not
the Knight, but Walker, Errant. He is a sort of fourth estate, outside
of Church and State and People.

We have felt that we almost alone hereabouts practiced this noble art;
though, to tell the truth, at least if their own assertions are to be
received, most of my townsmen would fain walk sometimes, as I do, but
they cannot. No wealth can buy the requisite leisure, freedom, and
independence which are the capital in this profession. It comes only
by the grace of God. It requires a direct dispensation from Heaven
to become a walker. You must be born into the family of the Walkers.
Ambulator nascitur, non fit. Some of my townsmen, it is true, can
remember and have described to me some walks which they took ten years
ago, in which they were so blessed as to lose themselves for half
an hour in the woods; but I know very well that they have confined
themselves to the highway ever since, whatever pretensions they may make
to belong to this select class. No doubt they were elevated for a moment
as by the reminiscence of a previous state of existence, when even they
were foresters and outlaws.

"When he came to grene wode,
In a mery mornynge,
There he herde the notes small
Of byrdes mery syngynge.

"It is ferre gone, sayd Robyn,
That I was last here;
Me Lyste a lytell for to shote
At the donne d