“If I entered a club and expressed my intention of going to the Opera, for instance, whatever small spark of enthusiasm I could kindle was submitted to a wet blanket on the spot. ‘Good heavens!’ would exclaim some venerable philosopher of the Cynic and Epicurean schools, ‘there _is_ no opera now, nor _ballet_ neither. My good sir, the thing is done; it’s over. We haven’t an artist left. Ah! you should have seen Taglioni dance; you should have heard Grisi sing; you should have lived when Plancus was consul. In short, you should be as old as I am, and as disgusted, and as gouty, and as disagreeable!’ “Or I walked into the smoking-room of that same resort, full of some athletic gathering at Holland Park, some ’Varsity hurdle-race, some trial of strength or skill amongst those lively boys, the subalterns of the Household Brigade; and ere I could articulate ‘brandy and soda’ I had Captain Barclay thrown body and bones in my face. ‘Walk, sir! You talk of walking?’ (I didn’t, for there had been barely time to get a word in edgeways, or my parable would have exhausted itself concerning a running high leap.) ‘But there is nothing like a real pedestrian left; they don’t breed ’em, sir, in these days: can’t grow them, and don’t know how to train them if they could! Show me a fellow who would make a match with Barclay to-day. Barclay, sir, if he were alive, would walk all your best men down after he came in from shooting. Ask your young friends which of ’em would like to drive the mail from London to Edinburgh without a greatcoat! I don’t know what’s come to the present generation. It must be the smoking, or the light claret, perhaps. They’re done, they’re used up, they’re washed out. Why, they go to covert by railway, and have their grouse driven to them on a hill! What would old Sir Tatton or Osbaldeston say to such doings as these? I was at Newmarket, I tell you, when the Squire rode his famous match—two hundred miles in less than nine hours! I saw him get off old Tranby, and I give you my honour the man looked fresher than the horse! Don’t tell me. He was rubbed down by a couple of prize-fighters (there were real bruisers in those days, and the best man used to win), dressed, and came to dinner just as _you_ would after a five-mile walk. Pocket Hercules, you call him—one in a thousand? There were hundreds of such men in my day. Why, I recollect in Tom Smith’s time that I myself——’