Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 56, June, 1862

Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 56, June,
1862, by Various

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Title: Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 56, June, 1862
Author: Various
Release Date: May 10, 2004 [EBook #12310]
Language: English
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THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY.
A MAGAZINE OF LITERATURE, ART, AND POLITICS.

* * * * *
VOL. IX.--JUNE, 1862.--NO. LVI.
* * * * *

WALKING.
I wish to speak a word for Nature, for absolute freedom and wildness,
as contrasted with a freedom and culture merely civil,--to regard man
as an inhabitant, or a part and parcel of Nature, rather than a member of
society. I wish to make an extreme statement, if so I may make an
emphatic one, for there are enough champions of civilization: the
minister, and the school-committee, and every one of you will take care
of that.
I have met with but one or two persons in the course of my life who
understood the art of Walking, that is, of taking walks,--who had a
genius, so to speak, for sauntering: which word is beautifully derived
"from idle people who roved about the country, in the Middle Ages,
and asked charity, under pretence of going à la Sainte Terre," to the
Holy Land, till the children exclaimed, "There goes a Sainte-Terrer" a
Saunterer,--a Holy-Lander. They who never go to the Holy Land in
their walks, as they pretend, are indeed mere idlers and vagabonds; but
they who do go there are saunterers in the good sense, such as I mean.
Some, however, would derive the word from sans terre, without land or
a home, which, therefore, in the good sense, will mean, having no
particular home, but equally at home everywhere. For this is the secret
of successful sauntering. He who sits still in a house all the time may
be the greatest vagrant of all; but the saunterer, in the good sense, is no
more vagrant than the meandering river, which is all the while
sedulously seeking the shortest course to the sea. But I prefer the first,
which, indeed, is the most probable derivation. For every walk is a sort
of crusade, preached by some Peter the Hermit in us, to go forth and
reconquer this Holy Land from the hands of the Infidels.

It is true, we are but faint-hearted crusaders, even the walkers,
nowadays, who undertake no persevering, never-ending enterprises.
Our expeditions are but tours, and come round again at evening to the
old hearth-side from which we set out. Half the walk is but retracing
our steps. We should go forth on the shortest walk, perchance, in the
spirit of undying adventure, never to return,--prepared to send back our
embalmed hearts only as relics to our desolate kingdoms. If you are
ready to leave father and mother, and brother and sister, and wife and
child and friends, and never see them again,--if you have paid your
debts, and made your will, and settled all your affairs, and are a free
man, then you are ready for a walk.
To come down to my own experience, my companion and I, for I
sometimes have a companion, take pleasure in fancying ourselves
knights of a new, or rather an old, order,--not Equestrians or Chevaliers,
not Ritters or Riders, but Walkers, a still more ancient and honorable
class, I trust. The chivalric and heroic spirit which once belonged to the
Rider seems now to reside in, or perchance to have subsided into, the
Walker,--not the Knight, but Walker Errant. He is a sort of fourth estate,
outside of Church and State and People.
We have felt that we almost alone hereabouts practised this noble art;
though, to tell the truth, at least, if their own assertions are to be
received, most of my townsmen would fain walk sometimes, as I do,
but they cannot. No wealth can buy the requisite leisure, freedom, and
independence, which are the capital in this profession. It comes only by
the grace of God. It requires a direct dispensation from Heaven to
become a walker. You must be born into the family of the Walkers.
Ambulator nascitur, non fit. Some of my townsmen, it is true, can
remember and have described to me some walks which they took ten
years ago, in which they were so blessed