"Yes, it does," rejoined Harry, "not directly, but indirectly. The weather, business, and amusements, turn attention into other channels, and consequently our country gentleman does not keep his light skiff and picturesque boat-house, because there's nobody to row the one or admire the other. Now, here's Karl, who lives in the country, and continually talks about country air and country exercise, why, bless you! if I hadn't taught him to ride, he wouldn't exercise at all: he does not walk a mile a day; hasn't rowed across the river since he's lived here; wouldn't join in a cricket-match to save himself from apoplexy; in short, is as lazy a fellow as can possibly be found. Then our country girls are just the same. Once in a while they ride, but there are hundreds of them living in the country who have never been on horseback; and when they do know how, they ride rarely, because they've no one to ride with them,--a young lady's dashing off ten or twelve miles with only a servant after her would be thought highly improper. Then, the way we dress is perfectly ridiculous: nothing substantial--nothing useful; a girl's walking shoes are as thin as paper; an English nobleman wears heavier boots than one of our laborers. The truth is, we have a great deal too much of Paris refinement; we must get England to come over and _uncivilize_ us. If we do live in a new country, we want to learn a few of the barbarous arts of riding, driving, walking, hunting, &c. It's a pity, too, that our young men, instead of being hale, hearty fellows, such as you have at the English universities, are generally a thin, hollow-chested, dyspeptic, consumptive-looking set--children at twenty, and old men at thirty." Ashburner had noticed this before, and it had surprised him that in a land where, less than a century ago, the inhabitants were literally denizens of the wilderness, he should find fewer field sports and less attention paid to that class of amusements than in the oldest counties of England. As Harry said, the weather and business were probably chief causes of the evil, while the inundation of French fashions and ideas had helped to sustain it.