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This increasing magnitude of our towns has its advantages , tib doubt ; but those advantages are purchased at a coistly fate ? . The good in one scale is Often overbalanced by evil in the other , — by evil so subtle that it frequently escapes our notice .
Exhilarating exercise in the open air is now almost unknown to the middle and working classes of our largest towns 3 whose local position and occupations most particularly require it . More educated they may be than their ancestors , and * possibly more temperate ; but will knowledge convert the foul air of the city into a healthy atmosphere ? or will temperance change the
unhealthy handicraft into agreeable and healthftil exercise ? The manly sports and games of our ancestors ate gone , and , on the spot wheYe they flourished ^ stands the public-house . By the townsman the beauties of nature are rarely seen , and when seen are rarely enjoyed or understood ; for how should he take delight in this beautiful world , whose existence has vibrated between
brick walls and the factory or forge ? The pleasures derivable from muscular exertion , under fa-Vpurable circumstances , will endure even to extreme old ag * e . With us they barely last Out our childhood . The greatest delight of the child is in vigorous bodily exertion . His other pleasures sink into nothing in comparison with this . And , in the country , when the labourers are well fed and not overworked , the delights of athletic exercise endure at least till middle life . If this be the
case with the hard working agriculturist , ought we not still more to expect it from him who plies the sickly trade , and whose employments should demand the counterbalance of athletic exertion ? Surely we ought not to look for his entire abandonment of these exercises , even from his boyish days . The desire * the craving- is extinguished , because the opportunity is uneeasiiigly denied ; nor
do his brethren of the shop and counting-house fare much better . Bodily disease soon comes <* tt , for the body brooks not the absence of its congenial exertion ; mental disease appears also , for the mind droops in the absence of Varied and pleasurable excitement ; mind and body react painfully , and thence the hypochondriac , the fanatic , the felon , or the madman . The philosophers
of Greece knew better ; for the calls made by this corporeal frame , and they were not satisfied with having knowledge and talking of it , they habitually ' curried theit knowledge into effect In their own persons , and Ver ily they had their reward . They lived long and happily ; and did such feats trf mental power as the world longs again to stee . - The physical perfection and length of life whidbt our aristocracy now generally attain ^ must * in < part > toe attributed to their fondaess for the sports of thfc field . Objectionable as tfaefte sports are in
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THE PLEASURES OF WALKIN G * .. .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), March 2, 1835, page 194, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2643/page/50/
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