Englishwomen and Frenchwomen.
French Peasants.
Riding on Horseback.
Cavalry and Artillery.
English Hunting.
In ordinary pedestrianism there is not much difference between the two countries except in the female sex, and there it is strongly marked. Englishwomen who have leisure walk perhaps three or four times as much as Frenchwomen in the same position. Young men in both countries may be equally good walkers if they have the advantage of rural life. The French peasants are slow pedestrians but remarkably enduring; they will go forty or fifty miles in the twenty-four hours, being out all night, and think nothing of it. Riding on horseback is much more practised in England; the economy of the carriage, by which one horse can transport several persons, and the excellent modern roads, had almost killed equestrianism in France, but now there are some signs of a revival. Here, too, the large national army has an excellent influence. Great numbers of Frenchmen learn to ride in the cavalry and artillery, and the captains of infantry are all mounted. There is not, in France, the most valuable training of all, that of riding to hounds in the English sense; and therefore it is probable that England could produce a far greater number of horsemen able to leap well. As for style in riding, that is a matter of taste, and national ideas differ. The French style is derived chiefly from military examples, the English indirectly from the hunting-field.
False Ideals of Dignity.
French Ecclesiastics.
Exercises permitted to English Clergymen.
French Notions of Dignity.