Democratic Sentinel, Volume 8, Number 21, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 20 June 1884 — Recreations of Men of Letters. [ARTICLE]

Recreations of Men of Letters.

Wordsworth composed his verses while walking, carried them in his memory, and got his wife or daughter to write them down on his return. When a visitor at Rydal Mount asked to see the poet’s study, the maid is reported to have shown him to a little handfu? jof books lying about on the table, sofa, and shelves, and to have remarked : “This is the master’s library, where he keaps his books, but,” returning to the door, “his study is out of doors,” whereupon she curtsied the visitor into the garden again. Landor also used to oompose while walking, and therefore always preferred to walk alone. Buckle walked every morning for a quarter of an hour before breakfast, and said that having adopted this custom upon medical advice, it had become necessary. “Heat or cold, sunshine or rain, made no difference to him, either for that mornmg stroll or for the afternoon walk, which had its appointed time and length, and which he would rarely allow himself to curtail, either for business or for visits. ” Equally careful was Longfellow in the preservation of his health. He persisted in outdoor exercise, even when the weather was the reverse of pleasant. Both in the spring and autumn, when raw and blustering winds prevailed, he never omitted his daily walk, though he might go no further than the bounds of his own garden. Darwin was at one time fond of horseback etcefcise, but after the death of his favorite horse, some ten or twelve years ago, he never rode again, but preferred to walk round his garden, or along the pleasant foot-paths through the lovely fields of Kent.

Walking was Macaulay’s favorite recreation, but, like Leigh Hunt, he seems to have been unable to sever himself from his books. He once said that he would like nothing so well as to bury himself in some great library, and never pass a walking hour without a book before him. Certainly he could never walk without his book. “He walked about London reading; he roamed through the lanes of Surrey reading, and even the new and surprising spectacle of the sea—so suggestive of brooding thought—could not seduce him from his books.” Macaulay reminds us of Thirwall, who, whether eating, walking, or riding, was never to be seen without a book. The favorite recreation of Charles Dickens was walking. By day, Prof. Ward points out, Dickens found in the London thoroughfares, stimulative variety ; and by night, in seasons of intellectual excitement, he found in the same streets the refreshment of isolation among crowds. “But the walks he loved best were long stretches on the cliffs, or across the downs by the sea, where, following the track of his ‘breathers,’ one half expects to meet him coming along against the wind at four and a half miles an hour, the very embodiment of energy, and brimfull of life.”

Carlyle usually took a vigorous walk of several miles, enough to get himself into a glow, before he commenced the day’s labor. Whether the spirit moved him or not, he entered his workshop at 10, toiled until 3, when he answered his letters, saw friends, read, and sometimes had a second walk. Victor Hugo loves to ride outside an omnibus. Carlyle was fond of riding inside. Apparently, neither walking in the streets nor riding in a rickety, bone-shaking omnibus aided Carlyle’s digestion; for a more dyspeptic and ill-natured author never breathed. It was he who called Charles Lamb and Mary a “very sorry pair of phenomena,” and pronounced his talk “contemptibly small, indicating wondrous ignorance and shallowness.” Never did men of such dissimilar tastes meet before; but they had one taste in common, and that was walking, for which Lamb confessed a restless impulse. How he loved London! Though he liked to pluck buttercups and daisies at times in the country, his sympathies were entirely with London. Like Dr. Johnson, he believed that when a man was tired of London he was tired of life, and he seems never to have grown weary of sounding the praises of that wonderful city, “London, whose dirtiest arab-frequented alley, and her low-est-bowing tradesman,” he told Wordsworth, he “would not exchange for Skiddaw and Halvellyn, James Walter, and the parson in the bargain. ” He loved not only the print-shops, the theaters, the bookstalls, but the crowds of human faces. “The wonder of these sights, ” he says, “impels me into nightwalks about her crowded streets, and I often shed tears in the motley Strand from fullness of joy at so much life.”— 'All the Year Round.