A Walk from London to John OGroats | Page 5

in
any country or age. Thinking that this famous establishment would be a
good starting point for my pedestrian tour, I concluded to proceed
thither first by railway, and thence to walk northward, by easy stages,

through the fertile and rural county of Essex. Taking an afternoon train,
I reached Kelvedon about 5 p.m.,- -the station for Tiptree, and a good
specimen of an English village, at two hours' ride from London. Calling
at the residence of a Friend, or Quaker, to inquire the way to the
Alderman's farm, he invited me to take tea with him, and be his guest
for the night,--a hospitality which I very gladly accepted, as it was a
longer walk than I had anticipated. After tea, my host, who was a
farmer as well as miller, took me over his fields, and showed me his
live stock, his crops of wheat, barley, oats, beans, and roots, which
were all large and luxuriant, and looked a tableau vivant of plenty
within the green hedges that enclosed and adorned them.
The next morning, after breakfast, my kind host set me on the way to
Tiptree by a footpath through alternating fields of wheat, barley, oats,
beans, and turnips, into which an English farm is generally divided.
These footpaths are among the vested interests of the walking public
throughout the United Kingdom. Most of them are centuries old. The
footsteps of a dozen generations have given them the force and sanctity
of a popular right. A farmer might as well undertake to barricade the
turnpike road as to close one of these old paths across his best fields.
So far from obstructing them, he finds it good policy to straighten and
round them up, and supply them with convenient gates or stiles, so that
no one shall have an excuse for trampling on his crops, or for diverging
into the open field for a shorter cut to the main road. Blessings on the
man who invented them! It was done when land was cheap, and public
roads were few; before four wheels were first geared together for
business or pleasure. They were the doing of another age; this would
not have produced them. They run through all the prose, poetry, and
romance of the rural life of England, permeating the history of green
hedges, thatched cottages, morning songs of the lark, moonlight walks,
meetings at the stile, harvest homes of long ago, and many a romantic
narrative of human experience widely read in both hemispheres. They
will run on for ever, carrying with them the same associations. They are
the inheritance of landless millions, who have trodden them in ages
past at dawn, noon, and night, to and from their labor; and in ages to
come the mowers and reapers shall tread them to the morning music of
the lark, and through Spring, Summer, Autumn, and Winter, they shall

show the fresh checker-work of the ploughman's hob-nailed shoe. The
surreptitious innovations of utilitarian science shall not poach upon
these sacred preserves of the people, whatever revolutions they may
produce in the machinery and speed of turnpike locomotion. These
pleasant and peaceful paths through park, and pasture, meandering
through the beautiful and sweet-breathing artistry of English agriculture,
are guaranteed to future generations by an authority which no
legislation can annul.
A walk of a few miles brought me in sight of Tiptree Hall; and its first
aspect relieved my mind of an impression which, in common with
thousands better informed, I had entertained in reference to the
establishment. An idea has generally prevailed among English farmers,
and agriculturists of other countries who have heard of Alderman
Mechi's experiments, that they were impracticable and almost valueless,
because they would not pay; that the balance- sheet of his operations
did and must ever show such ruinous discrepancy between income and
expenditure as must deter any man, of less capital and reckless
enthusiasm, from following his lead into such unconsidered ventures.
In short, he has been widely regarded at home and abroad as a bold and
dashing novice in agricultural experience, ready to lavish upon his own
hasty inventions a fortune acquired in his London warehouse; and all
this to make himself famous as a great light in the agricultural world,
which light, after all, was a mere will-o'-the-wisp sort of affair, leading
its dupes into the veriest bog of bankruptcy. In common with all those
bold, self-reliant spirits that have ventured to break away from the
antecedents of public opinion and custom, he has been the subject of
many ungenerous innuendoes and criticisms. All kinds of ambitions
and motives have been ascribed to him. Many a burly, red-faced farmer,
who boasts of an unbroken agricultural lineage reaching back into the
reign of Good Queen Bess, will tell you over his beer that