St. Paul daily globe. [volume] (Saint Paul, Minn.) 1884-1896, 1884-03-09
RecreatiOns of Men of Letters.
TAU The Year ROuRdl

Wordsworth composed his verses while
walking, carrying 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 poets study, the
maid is reported to have shown him little
room with handful of books lying about on
the table, sofa and shelves, and to have re-
marked, s'This is the masters library where
he keeps his books, but" return
ing to the door, ''his study is
out of doors,'' whereupon she
curtsied the visitor into the garden again.
Landor also used to compose while walking,
and therefore always preferred to walk alone.
Buckle walked every morning for quarter
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 morning 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 re-
verse of pleasant. Both in the spring and
autumn, when raw and clustering winds
prevailed, he never omitted his daily walk,
though he might go no further than the
bounds of his garden. Darwin was at one
time fond of horseback exercise, 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 footpaths through the lovely fields
of Kent.
Walking was Macaulay's favorite recrea-
ton, 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
we'll as to bury himself in some great library,
and never pass waking hour without a
book before him. Certainly he could never
walk without his book. s'He walked about
London reading; he roamed through the
lanes of Surrey reading, and even the new
surprising spectacle of the sea-so suggestive
of reverie and brooding thought-could not
seduce him from his books'' Macaulav re-
minds US of Thirlwall who, whether eating,
walking or riding, was never to be seen with
out book
The favorite recreation Of Charles Dickens
was walking. By day, Prof. Ward points
out, Dickens found in the London thor
oughfares stimulative variety; and by night,
in seasons of intellectual excitement, he
found in these 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 against the
wind at four and half miles an hour the
very embodiment of energy and brimful OF
life.''
Carlyle usually took a vigorous walk of
several miles, enough to get himself into q
glow, before he commenced the days labor.
Whether the spirit moved him or not, he
entered his workshop at 10, toiled until g,
when he answered his letters, saw friends,
read, and sometimes had a second walk.
Victor Hugo loves to ride outside an omni-
bus. Carlyle was fond of riding inside. APP
parently, neither walking in the streets, nor
riding in rickety, bone-shaking omnibus,
aided Carlyle's digestion; for more dys-
peptic and ill-natured author never
breathed. 1t was he who called Charles
Lamb and Mary Every sorry pair of phe-
nomena," and pronounced his talk icon
temptibly small, indicating wondrous ig-
norance 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 rest
less 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 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-frequanted
alley, and her lowest bowling tradesinan, = he
told Wordsworth, he would not exchange for
Skiddaw and Helvellyn, James Walter and
the parson into the bargain. He loved not
only the print-shops, the theatres, the hook
stalls, but the crowds of human faces.
''The wonder ofthese sights, y he says, Sim
pels me into night walks about her
crowded streets, and often shed tears in the
motley Strand from fullness of joy at SO
much life.''
Recently new form of exercise has been
commended to brain-workers by Dr., Richard
son, who contends that tricycling viii enable
them to obtain the change of thought, and
scene which they need. Tricycles are, un-