It is indeed astonishing with what ease and hilarity the English walk.  To an American it seems a kind of infatuation.  When Dickens was in this country, I imagine the aspirants to the honor of a walk with him were not numerous.  In a pedestrian tour of England by an American, I read that, “after breakfast with the Independent minister, he walked with us for six miles out of town upon our road.  Three little boys and girls, the youngest six years old, also accompanied us.  They were romping and rambling about all the while, and their morning walk must have been as much as fifteen miles; but they thought nothing of it, and when we parted were apparently as fresh as when they started, and very loath to return.”

I fear, also, the American is becoming disqualified for the manly art of walking by a falling off in the size of his foot.  He cherishes and cultivates this part of his anatomy, and apparently thinks his taste and good breeding are to be inferred from its diminutive size.  A small, trim foot, well booted or gaitered, is the national vanity.  How we stare at the big feet of foreigners, and wonder what may be the price of leather in those countries, and where all the aristocratic blood is, that these plebeian extremities so predominate!  If we were admitted to the confidences of the shoemaker to Her Majesty or to His Royal Highness, no doubt we should modify our views upon this latter point, for a truly large and royal nature is never stunted in the extremities; a little foot never yet supported a great character.

It is said that Englishmen, when they first come to this country, are for some time under the impression that American women all have deformed feet, they are so coy of them and so studiously careful to keep them hid.  That there is an astonishing difference between the women of the two countries in this respect, every traveler can testify; and that there is a difference equally astonishing between the pedestrian habits and capabilities of the rival sisters, is also certain.

The English pedestrian, no doubt, has the advantage of us in the matter of climate; for, notwithstanding the traditional gloom and moroseness of English skies, they have in that country none of those relaxing, sinking, enervating days, of which we have so many here, and which seem especially trying to the female constitution,—­days which withdraw all support from the back and loins, and render walking of all things burdensome.  Theirs is a climate of which it has been said that “it invites men abroad more days in the year and more hours in the day than that of any other country.”

Then their land is threaded with paths which invite the walker, and which are scarcely less important than the highways.  I heard of a surly nobleman near London who took it into his head to close a footpath that passed through his estate near his house, and open another a little farther off.  The pedestrians objected; the matter got into the courts, and after protracted litigation the aristocrat was beaten.  The path could not be closed or moved.  The memory of man ran not to the time when there was not a footpath there, and every pedestrian should have the right of way there still.