to show the ways already traversed. There is a healthy vigor
in the mind of the boy who would like of all things to be lost in the
woods, to build a fire out of doors, and sleep under a tree or in a
haystack. Civilization is tiresome and enfeebling, unless we
occasionally give it the relish of a little outlawry, and approach, in
imagination at least, the zest of a gypsy life. The records of
pedestrian journeys, the Wanderjahre and memoirs of good-for-noth-ings,
and all the delightful German forest literature,--these belong to the
footpath side of our nature. The passage I best remember in all Bayard
Taylor's travels is the ecstasy of his Thuringian forester, who said:
"I recall the time when just a sunny morning made me so happy that I
did not know what to do with myself. One day in spring, as I went
through the woods and saw the shadows of the young leaves upon the
moss, and smelt the buds of the firs and larches, and thought to
myself, 'All thy life is to be spent in the splendid forest,'I actually
threw myself down and rolled in the grass like a dog, over and over,
crazy with joy."

It is the charm of pedestrian journeys that they convert the grandest
avenues to footpaths. Through them alone we gain intimate knowledge of
the people, and of nature, and indeed of ourselves. It is easy to hurry
too fast for our best reflections, which, as the old monk said of
perfection, must be sought not by flying, but by walking, "Perfectionis
via non pervolanda sed perambulanda." The thoughts that the railway
affords us are dusty thoughts; we ask the news, read the journals,
question our neighbor, and wish to know what is going on because we are
a part of it. It is only in the footpath that our minds, like our
bodies, move slowly, and we traverse thought, like space, with a
patient thoroughness. Rousseau said that he had never experienced so
much, lived so truly, and been so wholly himself, as during his travels
on foot.

What can Hawthorne mean by saying in his English diary that "an
American would never understand the passage in Bunyan about Christian
and Hopeful going astray along a by-path into the grounds of Giant
Despair, from there being no stiles and by-paths in our country"? So
much of the charm of American pedestrianism lies in the by-paths! For
instance, the whole interior of Cape Ann, beyond Gloucester, is a
continuous woodland, with granite ledges everywhere cropping out,
around which the high-road winds, following t