This diagram represents them going along fair heel-and-toe, perhaps not very elegantly, but at any rate it conveys the idea of walking.
Now it is self-evident that, in walking, the legs must pass each other at every step. Let us endeavor to draw our pedestrian at the moment when one leg is passing in front of the other, and we shall find it impossible to give the idea of fair heel-and-toe walking.
Now, why is this? The reason appears to me to be twofold; in the first place, at each step there is a momentary pause when both feet are on the ground; and the eye seizes on this pause, and naturally associates the position the legs are in with the action of walking. Secondly, it is only in this position that any idea can be given of the length of the step and the rate of the man’s progress. A photograph taken at the moment when one leg is passing the other, would not convey the impression of forward movement.
In nature it is the actual motion of the leg which causes the attitude to appear all right; but if we could arrest it instantaneously, the action would appear as cramped in nature as it does on paper.
During a thunder-storm at night, if you should ever happen to see a walking or a running man illumined by a flash of lightning, you will notice that he does not appear to be moving at all, unless the flash occurs just at the time when his legs are fully extended. I have myself seen the curious effect of a sudden flash of light on a moving carriage and horses. The horses, though trotting fully eight miles an hour, did not seem to be moving, and every spoke in the wheels was as plainly seen as if they had not been rotating.
What I have said about the action of walking applies equally to running. The attitude appears always more or less cramped unless the moment is seized when the runner’s legs are fully extended.
The illustration of running given in Flaxman’s lectures is wrong in more than one particular. In the first place, the heel ought not to touch the ground; it never does in running. Secondly, the figure appears poised on his right foot; indeed, he would fall rather backward than forward; and it is essentially necessary, in expressing the action of running, that the figure should appear to fall forward whenever one foot is on the ground.
