It was, he says, more comfortable to take his time. Is our business more pressing than his was? It can hardly be, seeing that he wended with a company whose errand was to prevent the two masters of the world from coming to blows. In comparison with such a mission, who will put the buying of a cargo of cotton, or arriving an hour before a public meeting begins, or catching a pic-nic party just in the nick of time? St. Bernard rode from sunrise to sunset along the Lake Leman without once putting his mule out of a walk; so much delectation the holy man felt in beholding the beauty of the water and the mountains, and in “chewing the cud of his own sweet or bitter fancies.” And good Michel Seigneur de Montaigne took a week for his journey from Nice to Pisa, although his horse was one of the smartest trotters in Gascony, merely for the pleasure he felt in following the by-lanes. And did not Richard Hooker receive from Bishop Jewell his blessing and his walking-staff, and yet with such poor means of speed he thought not of the weary miles between Exeter and Oxford, but trudged merrily with a thankful heart for the good oak prop, and the better blessing? Much less content with his journey was Richard when he rode to London on a hard-paced nag, that he might be in time to preach his first sermon at St. Paul’s. And was not this, the hastier of his journeys, the most unlucky in his life, seeing that it brought him acquainted with that foul shrew, Joan, his wife, who made his after-days as bitter to him, patient and godly though he were, as wormwood and coloquintida? Are not these goodly examples, Christian and Heathen? Let the Train rush along, you and I will travel at our own pace. Neither shall you, if you will be ruled by your present guide, saunter along the roads of Britain alone, or on known and extant ways only. Are there not roads which never paid toll, roads in the waste, roads travelled only in vision, roads once traversed by the feet of myriads, yet now overgrown by the forest, or buried deeply in the marsh? Shall we not for awhile be surveyors of these forgotten highways, and pause beside the tombs of the kings, or consuls, or Incas, who first levelled them? The world has moved westward with the daily motion of the earth. Yet, in the far East lie the most ancient highways—whose pavements once echoed with the hurrying feet of Nimrod’s outposts or the trampling of Agamemnon’s rear-guard. It were well to mark how that ancient chivalry sped along their causeways. Nor, on our devious route, shall baiting-places be wanting. Drunken Barnaby stayed not oftener to prove the ale than we will do:—