Of course, the demand of our nature is not always for continuous exertion.  One does not always seek that “rough exercise” which Sir John Sinclair asserts to be “the darling idol of the English.”  There are delicious languors, Neapolitan reposes, Creole siestas, “long days and solid banks of flowers.”  But it is the birthright of the man of the temperate zones to alternate these voluptuous delights with more heroic ones, and sweeten the reverie by the toil.  So far as they go, the enjoyments of the healthy body are as innocent and as ardent as those of the soul.  As there is no ground of comparison, so there is no ground of antagonism.  How compare a sonata and a sea-bath or measure the Sistine Madonna against a gallop across country?  The best thanksgiving for each is to enjoy the other also, and educate the mind to ampler nobleness.  After all, the best verdict on athletic exercises was that of the great Sully, when he said, “I was always of the same opinion with Henry IV. concerning them:  he often asserted that they were the most solid foundation, not only of discipline and other military virtues, but also of those noble sentiments and that elevation of mind which give one nature superiority over another.”

We are now ready, perhaps, to come to the question, How are these athletic enjoyments to be obtained?  The first and easiest answer is, By taking a long walk every day.  If people would actually do this, instead of forever talking about doing it, the object might be gained.  To be sure, there are various defects in this form of exercise.  It is not a play, to begin with, and therefore does not withdraw the mind from its daily cares; the anxious man recurs to his problems on the way; and each mile, in that case, brings fresh weariness to brain as well as body.  Moreover, there are, according to Dr. Grau, “three distinct groups of muscles which are almost totally neglected where walking alone is resorted to, and which consequently exist only in a crippled state, although they are of the utmost importance, and each stands in close rapport with a number of other functions of the greatest necessity to health and life.”  These he afterwards classifies as the muscles of the shoulders and chest, having a bearing on the lungs,—­the abdominal muscles, bearing on the corresponding organs,—­and the spinal muscles, which are closely connected with the whole nervous system.

But the greatest practical difficulty is, that walking, being the least concentrated form of exercise, requires a larger appropriation of time than most persons are willing to give.  Taken liberally, and in connection with exercises which are more concentrated and have more play about them, it is of great value, and, indeed, indispensable.  But so far as I have seen, instead of these other pursuits taking the place of pedestrianism, they commonly create a taste for it; so that, when the sweet spring-days come round, you will see our afternoon gymnastic class begin to scatter literally to the four winds; or they look in for a moment, on their way home from the woods, their hands filled and scented with long wreaths of the trailing arbutus.