In March, 1868, the first of the walking records was established, the sporting papers of that age chronicling what they very rightly described as a "Great Walking Feat": a walk, not merely to Brighton, but to Brighton _and back_. This heroic undertaking, which was not repeated until 1902, was performed by one "Mr. Benjamin B. Trench, late Oxford University." On March 20th, for a heavy wager, he started to walk the hundred miles from Kennington Church to Brighton and back in twenty-five hours. Setting out on the Friday, at 6 p.m., he was back at Kennington Church at 5 p.m. Saturday, having thus won his wager with two hours to spare. It will be observed, or guessed, from the absence of odd minutes and seconds that in 1868, timing, as an exact science, had not been born; but it is evident that this stalwart walked his hundred miles on ordinary roads at an average rate of a little over four and a quarter miles an hour. "He then," concludes the report, "walked round the Oval several times, till seven o'clock." To each age the inventions it deserves. Cycling would have been impossible in the mid-eighteenth century, when Walpole and Burton travelled with such difficulty. When roads began to deserve the name, the Mail Coach was introduced; and when they grew hard and smooth, out of their former condition of ruts and mud, the quaint beginnings of the bicycle are noticed. The Hobby Horse and McAdam, the man who first preached the modern gospel of good roads, were contemporary. [Sidenote: THE HOBBY-HORSE] I have said the beginnings of the bicycle were quaint, and I think no one will be concerned to dispute this alleged quaintness of the Hobby Horse, which had a certain strictly limited popularity from 1819 to 1830. I do not think any one ever rode from London to Brighton on one of these machines; and, when you come to consider the build and the limitations of them, and then think of the hills on the way, it is quite impossible that any one should so ride. It was perhaps within the limits of human endurance to ride a Hobby Horse along the levels, to walk it up the rises, and then to madly descend the hills, and so reach Brighton, very sore; but records do not tell us of such a stern pioneer. The Hobby Horse, it should be said, was an affair of two wooden wheels with iron tyres. A heavy timber frame connected these wheels, and on it the courageous rider straddled, his feet touching the ground. The Hobby Horse had no pedals, and the rider propelled his hundredweight or so of iron and timber by running in this straddling position and thus obtaining a momentum which only on the down grade would carry him any distance.