he must be allowed to do his work on turf. frightened by Mr. Shepherd's picture of a storm We know that Arab horses will carry their in a puddle, and proposes a plan of alleviation rider, provision and provender, arms and ac- of one great inconvenience of pedestrianizing coutrements, (no light weight,) across the de- "Persons," quoth he, "who take a pedestrian sert, eighty miles a-day, for many days-and excursion, and intend to subject themselves to that for four days they have gone a hundred the uncertainties of accommodation, by going miles a-day. That would have puzzled Cap- across the country and visiting unfrequented tain Barclay in his prime, the Prince of Pe-paths, will act wisely to carry with them a destrians. However, be that as it may, the piece of oil-skin to sit upon while taking recomparative pedestrian powers of man and freshments out of doors, which they will often horse have never yet been ascertained by any find needful during such excursions." To save accredited match in England. trouble, the breech of the pedestrian's breeches should be a patch of oil-skin. Here a question of great difficulty and importance arisesBreeches or trousers? Dr. Kitchiner is decidedly for breeches. "The garter," says he, "should be below the knee, and breeches are much better than trowsers. The general adoption of those which, till our late wars, were exclusively used by the Lords of the Ocean,' has often excited my astonishment. However convenient trousers may be to the sailor who has to cling to slippery shrouds, for the landsman nothing can be more inconvenient. They are heating in summer, and in winter they are collectors of mud. Moreover, they occasion a necessity for wearing garters. Breeches are, in all respects, much more convenient. These should have the knee-band three quarters of an inch wide, lined on the upper side with a piece of plush, and fastened with a buckle, which is much easier than even double strings, and, by observing the strap, you always know the exact degree of tightness that is required to keep up the stocking; any pressure beyond that is prejudicial, especially to those who walk long distances."

The Doctor then quotes an extract from a Pedestrian Tour in Wales by a Mr. Shepherd, who, we are afraid, is no great headpiece, though we shall be happy to find ourselves in error. Mr. Shepherd, speaking of the inconveniencies and difficulties attending a pedestrian excursion, says, "that at one time the roads are rendered so muddy by the rain, that it is almost impossible to proceed;"-" at other times you are exposed to the inclemency of the weather, and by wasting time under a tree or a hedge are benighted in your journey, and again reduced to an uncomfortable dilemma." "Another disadvantage is, that your track is necessarily more confined-a deviation of ten or twelve miles makes an important difference, which, if you were on horseback, would be considered as trivial." 66 Under all these circumstances," he says, "it may appear rather remarkable that we should have chosen a pedestrian excursion-in answer to which, it may be observed, that we were not apprized of these things till we had experienced them." What! Mr. Shepherd, were you, who we presume have reached the age of puberty, not apprized, before you penetrated as a pedestrian into the Principality, that "roads are rendered muddy by the rain ?" Had you never met, either in your experience of life, or in the course of your reading, proof positive that pedestrians "are exposed to the inclemency of the weather?" That, if a man will linger too long under a tree or a hedge when the sun is going down, "he will be benighted?" Under what serene atmosphere, in what happy clime, have you pursued your preparatory studies sub dio? But, our dear Mr. Shepherd, why waste time under the shelter of a tree or a hedge? Waste time nowhere, our young and unknown friend. What the worse would you have been of being soaked to the skin? Besides, consider the danger you ran of being killed by lightning, had there been a few flashes, under a tree? Further, what will become of you, if you addict yourself on every small emergency to trees and hedges, when the country you walk through happens to be as bare as the palm of your hand? Button your jacket, good sir-scorn an umbrella -emerge boldly from the silvan shade, snap your fingers at the pitiful pelting of the pitiless storm-poor spite indeed in Densissimus Imber-and we will insure your life for a presentation copy of your Tour against all the diseases that leapt out of Pandora's box, not only till you have reached the Inn at CapelCerig, but your own home in England, (we forget the county,)-ay, till your marriage, and the baptism of your first-born.

Dr. Kitchiner seems to have been much

We are strongly inclined to agree with the Doctor in his panegyric on breeches. True, that in the forenoons, especially if of a dark colour, such as black, and worn with white, or even gray or bluish, stockings, they are apt, in the present state of public taste, to stamp you a schoolmaster, or a small grocer in full dress. or an exciseman going to a ball. We could dispense too with the knee-buckles and plush lining-though we allow the one might be ornamental, and the other useful. But what think you, gentle reader, of walking with a Pedometer? A Pedometer is an instrument cunningly devised to tell you how far and how fast you walk, and is, quoth the Doctor, a "perambulator in miniature." The box containing the wheels is made of the size of a watch-case, and goes into the breeches-pocket, and by means of a string and hook, fastened at the waistband or at the knee, the number of steps a man takes, in his regular paces, are registered from the action of the string upon the internal wheelwork at every step, to the amount of 30,000. It is necessary to ascertain the distance walked, that the average length of one pace be precisely known, and that multiplied by the number of steps registered cn the dial-plate.

All this is very ingenious; and we know one tolerable pedestrian who is also a Pedometrist. But no Pedometrician will ever make a fortune in a mountainous island, like Great Britain, where pedestrianism is indigenous to the soil. A good walker is as regular in his

going as clock-work. He has his different glimmering eyes with honey-dew, and stretches paces-three, three and a half-four, four and out, under the loving hands of nourrice Nature, a half-five, five and a half-six miles an hour the whole elongated animal economy, steeped toe and heel. A common watch, therefore, in rest divine from the organ of veneration to Is to him, in the absence of milestones, as good the point of the great toe, be it on a bed of as a Pedometer-with this great and indis- down, chaff, straw, or heather, in palace, hall. putable advantage, that a common watch con- hotel, or hut? If in an inn, nobody interferes tinues to go even after you have yourself with you in meddling officiousness; neither stopped, whereas, the moment you sit down on landlord, bagman, waiter, chambermaid, boots your oil-skin patch, why, your Pedometer-you are left to yourself without being neg (which indeed, from its name and construction, lected. Your bell may not be emulously is not unreasonable) immediately stands still. Neither, we believe, can you accurately note the pulse of a friend in a fever by a Pedometer. What pleasure on this earth transcends a breakfast after a twelve-mile walk? Or is there in this sublunary scene a delight superior to the gradual, dying-away, dreamy drowsiness that, at the close of a long summer day's journey up hill and down dale, seals up the

answered by all the menials on the establish. ment, but a smug or shock-headed drawer appears in good time; and if mine host may not always dignify your dinner by the deposi tion of the first dish, yet, influenced by the rumour that soon spreads through the pre mises, he bows farewell at your departure, with a shrewd suspicion that you are a nobleman in disguise.

SOLILOQUY ON THE SEASONS.

FIRST RHAPSODY.

No weather more pleasant than that of a mild WINTER day. So gracious the season, that Hyems is like Ver-Januarius like Christopher North. Art thou the Sun of whom Milton said,

"Looks through the horizontal misty air, Shorn of his beams,"

expectant of our "golden opinions," when all eyes are turned to the speechless "old man eloquent," and you might hear a tangle dishevelling itself in Neera's hair. But all alone by ourselves, in the country, among trees, stand. ing still among untrodden leaves-as nowhow we do speak! All thoughts-all feelings -desire utterance; left to themselves they are not happy till they have evolved into wordswinged words that sometimes settle on the ground, like moths on flowers-sometimes seek the sky, like eagles above the clouds.

No such soliloquies in written poetry as these of ours-the act of composition is fatal as frost to their flow; yet composition there is at such solitary times going on among the moods of the mind, as among the clouds on a still but not airless sky, perpetual but imper ceptible transformations of the beautiful, obedient to the bidding of the spirit of beauty.

an image of disconsolate obscuration? Bright art thou as at meridian on a June Sabbath; but effusing a more temperate lustre, not unfelt by the sleeping, though not insensate earth. She stirs in her sleep, and murmurs - the mighty mother; and quiet as herself, though broad awake, her old ally the ship-bearing sea. What though the woods be leafless-they look as alive as when laden with umbrage; and who can tell what is going on now within the heart of that calm oak grove? The fields laugh not now-but here and there they smile. Who but Him who made it knoweth aught If we see no flowers we think of them-and of the Laws of Spirit? All of us may know less of the perished than of the unborn; for much of what is "wisest, virtuousest, discreetregret is vain, and hope is blest; in peace est, best," in obedience to them; but leaving there is the promise of joy-and therefore in the open day, we enter at once into thickest the silent pastures a perfect beauty how re-night. Why at this moment do we see a spct storative to man's troubled heart!

The Shortest Day in all the year-yet is it lovelier than the Longest. Can that be the voice of birds? With the laverock's lyric our fancy filled the sky-with the throstle's roundelay it awoke the wood. In the air life is audible-circling unseen. Such serenity must be inhabited by happiness. Ha! there thou art, our Familiar-the selfsame Robin Redbreast that pecked at our nursery window, and used to warble from the gable of the school-house his sweet winter song!

In company we are silent-in solitude we soliloquize. So dearly do we love our own voice that we cannot bear to hear it mixed with that of others-perhaps drowned; and then our bashfulness tongue-ties us in the hush

once only visited by us-unremembered fcr ever so many flights of black or bright winged years-see it in fancy as it then was in nature, with the same dew-drops on that wondrous myrtle beheld but on that morning-such a myrtle as no other eyes beheld ever on this earth but ours, and the eyes of one now in heaven?

Another year is about to die—and how wags the world?" "What great events are on the gale?" Go ask our statesmen. But their rule

their guidance is but over the outer world, and almost powerless their folly or their wis dom over the inner region in which we mor tals live, and move, and have our being, where the fall of a throne makes no more noise than that of a leaf!

Thank Heaven! Summer and Autumn are both dead and buried at last, and white lies the snow on their graves! Youth is the season of all sorts of insolence, and therefore we can forgive and forget almost any thing in SPRING. He has always been a privileged personage; and we have no doubt that he played his pranks even in Paradise. To-day, he meets vou unexpectedly on the hill-side; and was there ever a face in this world so celestialized by smiles! All the features are framed of light. Gaze into his eyes, and you feel that in the untroubled lustre there is something more sublime than in the heights of the cloudless heavens, or in the depths of the waveless seas. More sublime, because essentially spiritual. There stands the young Angel, entranced in the conscious mystery of his own beautiful and blessed being; and the earth becomes all at once fit region for the sojourn of the Son of the Morning. So might some great painter image the First-born of the Year, till nations adored the picture.-To-morrow you repair, with hermit steps, to the Mount of the Vision, and,

during all that wavering visitation, to be of al sights the most evanescent, and yet inspirative of a beauty-born belief, bright as the sun that flung the image on the cloud-profound as the gloom it illumines-that it shone and is shining there at the bidding of Him who inhabiteth eternity.-The grim noon of Saturday, after a moaning morning, and one silent inte mediate lour of grave-like stillness, begins gleam fitfully with lightning like a maniac's eye; and is not that

"The sound
Of thunder heard remote?"

On earth wind there is none-not so much as a breath. But there is a strong wind in heaven-for see how that huge cloud-city, a night within a day, comes moving on along the hidden mountain-tops, and hangs over the loch all at once black as pitch, except that here and there a sort of sullen purple heaves upon the long slow swell, and here and there along the shores-how caused we know not-are seer, but heard not, the white melancholy breakers! Is no one smitten blind? No! Thank God! "Fierce as ten furies, terrible as hell," But ere the thanksgiving has been worded, an Spring clutches you by the hair with the fingers airquake has split asunder the cloud-city, the of frost; blashes a storm of sleet in your face, night within the day, and all its towers and and finishes, perhaps, by folding you in a wind- temples are disordered along the firmament, to ing-sheet of snow, in which you would infalli- a sound that might waken the dead. Where bly perish but for a pocket-pistol of Glenlivet. are ye, ye echo-hunters, that grudge not to -The day after to-morrow, you behold him- purchase gunpowder explosions on Lowood Spring-walking along the firmament, sad, but bowling-green at four shillings the blast? See! not sullen-mournful, but not miserable-dis- there are our artillerymen stalking from batturbed, but not despairing-now coming out tery to battery-all hung up aloft facing the towards you in a burst of light-and now fad-west-or "each standing by his gun" with ing away from you in a gathering of gloom-lighted match, moving or motionless Shadoweven as one might figure in his imagination a figures, and all clothed in black-blue uniform, fallen Angel. On Thursday, confound you if with blood-red facings portentously glancing you know what the deuse to make of his in the sun, as he strives to struggle into heaSpringship. There he is, stripped to the buff ven. The Generalissimo of all the forces, who -playing at hide-and-seek, hare-and-hound, is he but-Spring?-Hand in hand with Spring, with a queer crazy crony of his in a fur cap, Sabbath descends from heaven unto earth; and swandown waistcoat, and hairy breeches, Lod- are not their feet beautiful on the mountains? brog or Winter. You turn up the whites of Small as is the voice of that tinkling bell from your eyes, and the browns of your hands in that humble spire, overtopped by its coeval amazement, till the Two, by way of change trees, yet is it heard in the heart of infinitude. of pastime, cease their mutual vagaries, and So is the bleating of these silly sheep on the like a couple of hawks diverting themselves braes-and so is that voice of psalms, all at with an owl, in conclusion buffet you off the once rising so spirit-like, as if the very kirk premises. You insert the occurrence, with were animated, and singing a joyous song in suitable reflections, in your Meteorological the wilderness to the ear of the Most High. Diary, under the head-Spring. On Friday, For all things are under his care-those that, nothing is seen of you but the blue tip of your as we dream, have no life-the flowers, and nose, for you are confined to bed by rheuma- the herbs, and the trees-those that some dim tism, and nobody admitted to your sleepless scripture seems to say, when they die, utterly sanctum but your condoling Mawsey.. "Tis a perish-and those that all bright scripture, pity. For never since the flood-greened earth whether written in the book of God, or the on ner first resurrection morn laughed around book of Nature, declares will live for ever! Ararat, spanned was she by such a Rainbow! If such be the character and conduct of By all that is various and vanishing, the arch Spring during one week, wilt thou not forget seems many miles broad, and many miles high, and forgive-with us-much occasional conand all creation to be gladly and gloriously duct on his part that appears not only inex gathered together without being crowded- plicable, but incomprehensible? But we canplains, woods, villages, towns, hills, and not extend the same indulgence to Summer clouds, beneath the pathway of Spring, once and to Autumn. SUMMER is a season come to more an Angel—an unfallen Angel! While the the years of discretion, and ought to conduct tinge that trembles into transcendent hues fad- himself like a staid, sober, sensible, middleing and fluctuating-deepening and dying-aged man, not past, but passing, his prime. now gone, as if for ever-and now back again in an instant, as if breathing and alive-is felt,

Now, Summer, we are sorry to say it, often behaves in a way to make his best friends

like into a still more mysterious night! Long as a Midsummer Day is, it has gone by like a Heron's flight. The sun is setting!-and let him set without being scribbled upon by Christopher North. We took a pen-and-ink sketch of him in a "Day on Windermere." Poor nature is much to be pitied among painters and poets. They are perpetually falling into

"Such perusal of her face

As they would draw it." And often must she be sick of the Curious Im pertinents. But a Curious Impertinent are not we-if ever there was one beneath the skies, a devout worshipper of Nature; and though we often seem to heed not her shrineit stands in our imagination, like a temple in a perpetual Sabbath.

ashamed of him-in a way absolutely disgraceful to a person of his time of life. Having picked a quarrel with the Sun-his benefactor, nay, his father-what else could he expect but that that enlightened Christian would altogether withhold his countenance from so undutiful and ungrateful a child, and leave him to travel along the mire and beneath the clouds? For some weeks Summer was sulky-and sullenly scorned to shed a tear. His eyes were like ice. By and by, like a great school-boy, he began to whine and whimper-and when he found that would not do, he blubbered like the booby of the lowest form. Still the Sun would not look on himor if he did, 'twas with a sudden and short half-scowl that froze the ingrate's blood. At last the Summer grew contrite, and the Sun forgiving; the one burst out into a flood of It was poetically and piously said by the tears, the other into a flood of light. In sim- Ettrick Shepherd, at a Noctes, that there is no ple words, the Summer wept and the Sun such thing in nature as bad weather. Take smiled-and for one broken month there was Summer, which early in our soliloquy we a perpetual alternation of rain and radiance! abused in good set terms. Its weather was How beautiful is penitence! How beautiful broken, but not bad; and much various beauty forgiveness! For one week the Summer was and sublimity is involved in the epithet restored to his pristine peace and old luxuri- " broken," when applied to the "season of the ance, and the desert blossomed like the rose. year." Common-place people, especially townTherefore ask we the Summer's pardon for dwellers, who fit into the country for a few thanking Heaven that he was dead. Would months, have a silly and absurd idea of Sumthat he were alive again, and buried not for mer, which all the atmospherical phenomena ever beneath the yellow forest leaves! O thou fail to drive out of their foolish fancies. They first, faint, fair, finest tinge of dawning Light insist on its remaining with us for half a year that streaks the still-sleeping yet just-waking at least, and on its being dressed in its Sunface of the morn, Light and no-Light, a sha- day's best every day in the week as long as dowy Something, that as we gaze is felt to be they continue in country quarters. The Sun growing into an emotion that must be either must rise, like a labourer, at the very earliest Innocence or Beauty, or both blending together hour, shine all day, and go to bed late, else into devotion before Deity, once more duly they treat him contumeliously, and declare visible in the divine colouring that forebodes that he is not worth his meat. Should he reanother day to mortal life-before Thee what tire occasionally behind a cloud, which it seems holy bliss to kneel upon the greens ward in most natural and reasonable for one to do who some forest glade, while every leaf is a-tremble lives so much in the public eye, why a whole with dewdrops, and the happy little birds are watering-place, uplifting a face of dissatisfied beginning to twitter, yet motionless among the expostulation to heaven, exclaims, "Where is boughs-before Thee to kneel as at a shrine, the Sun? Are we never to have any Sun?" and breathe deeper and deeper-as the lustre They also insist that there shall be no rain of waxeth purer and purer, brighter and more more than an hour's duration in the daytime, bright, till range after range arise of crimson but that it shall all fall by night. Yet when clouds in altitude sublime, and breast above the Sun does exert himself, as if at their bidbreast expands of yellow woods softly glitter-ding, and is shining, as he supposes, to their ing in their far-spread magnificence-then heart's content, up go a hundred green parasols what holy bliss to breathe deeper and deeper in his face, enough to startle the celestial unto Him who holds in the hollow of his hand the heavens and the earth, our high but most humble orisons! But now it is Day, and broad awake seems the whole joyful world. The clouds-lustrous no more-are all anchored on the sky, white as fleets waiting for the wind. Time is not felt-and one might dream that the Day was to endure for ever. Yet the great river rolls on in the light-and why will he leave those lovely inland woods for the naked shores? Why-responds some voice-hurry we on our lives-impetuous and passionate far more than he with all his cataracts as if anxious to forsake the regions of the upper day for the dim place from which we yet recoil in fear-the dim place which imagination sometimes seems to see even through the sunshine, beyond the bourne of this our unintelligible being, stretching sea

steeds in his chariot. A broken summer for us. Now and then a few continuous daysperhaps a whole week-but, if that be denied, now and then,

"Like angel visits, few and far between," one single Day-blue-spread over heaven, green-spread over earth-no cloud above, no shade below, save that dove-coloured mart le lying motionless like the mansions of peace, and that pensive gloom that falls from some old castle or venerable wood-the stillness of a sleeping joy, to our heart profounder than that of death, in the air, in the sky, and resting on our mighty mother's undisturbed breastno lowing on the hills, no bleating on the braes -the rivers almost silent as lochs, and the lochs, just visible in their aeza purity, float ing dream-like between earth and sky, imbued with the beauty of both, and seeming to belong

Nay-nay-things are not altogether so bad with us as this strain-sincere though it be as a stream from the sacred mountains-might seem to declare. We can yet enjoy a broken Summer. It would do your heart good to see us hobbling with our crutch along the Highland hills, sans great-coat or umbrella, in a summer-shower, aiblins cap in hand that our hair may grow, up to the knees in the bonny blooming heather, or clambering, like an old goat, among the cliffs. Nothing so good for gout or rheumatism as to get wet through, while the thermometer keeps ranging between 60° and 70°, three times a-day. What refreshment in the very sound-Soaking! Old bones wax dry-nerves numb-sinews stiff-fleshed frail-and there is a sad drawback on the Whole Duty of Man. But a sweet, soft, sou'wester blows "caller" on our craziness, and all our pores instinctively open their mouths at the approach of rain. Look but at those dozen downward showers, all denizens of heaven, how black, and blue, and bright they in their glee are streaming, and gleaming