fit was to walk the forty miles each day, between six in the mornin g and six in the evening. In this year died Robert Batley, of Hutford, Norfolk, a great walker, who often went from Thetford to London (eighty-one miles) in one day, and back again the next day. 1786.-J. York, ostler, Windsor, ran four miles, over the course at Egham, in twenty-four minutes and a half. 1787.-Reed of Hampshire (before mentioned), walked fifty miles in little more than nine hours, on the Weymouth Sands. A young man ran eighteen miles, for 50 guineas, on the Colnbrook road. The time allowed was two hours and a quarter, which he completed in two hours. A match for a mile was run, in the City-road, between Walpole, a butcher, and the noted Pope, which was won by the former, who ran the distance, though the road was very heavy, in four minutes and a half. The match made by Colonel Thornton with Mr. Mag, that the former would not walk fifty miles in fourteen successive hours, was accomplished in twelve hours and thirty-five minutes, the colonel walking nearly a mile over the distance. A favourite pointer attended his master during the match. In 1788, a young man of the name of Evans ran ten miles in fiftyfive minutes and eighteen seconds, for a bet of 300 guineas. No less than £10,000 changed hands on the occasion. John Batty undertook, for a wager of £100 to £10, to walk seven hundred miles, on the Richmond race-course, in fourteen days, which he performed, with great ease, within five hours of the appointed time. The following is the account of the manner in which he accomplished it : Total......... 704% William Shelton, a miller at Tuxford, walked six miles in fifty-eight minutes and a half, for a wager of 2 guineas. The time allowed was an hour. Wild ran over Knutsford race-course, four miles, for 50 guineas. He was allowed twenty-two minutes, but performed it in twenty-one minutes and a quarter. 1789.-Wills, the celebrated Shropshire sawyer, backed himself to go one hundred miles in twenty-one hours and thirty-five minutes; and which distance he performed with great ease in an hour less than the given time. 1790.-Colin Macleod, a Scotchman, walked from Inverness to London and back again, and afterwards to the metropolis again. He was then more than four-score years of age. Thomas Savager, a labourer in Herefordshire, undertook to walk four hundred and four miles in six days, on the road between Hereford and Ludlow, which was very rough and stony; and, by the terms of the wager, he was to pass a hill, two miles in length from the extremities of the sides and very difficult of ascent, three times every day. Savager was forty-seven years of age. The weather was most unpropitious, as there was a continual fall of sleet and snow during the journey, notwithstanding which he walked seventy-nine miles in one day, and sixty-nine the day following; and in the end won his wager with ease. A farmer originally bet Savager ten to one that he did not perform this task, and he afterwards doubled it; so that the pedestrian's entire gain was 20 guineas. Richard West, of Old Windsor, aged fifty-two, walked from that town to Hyde Park Corner and back in six hours and forty minutes, for a considerable wager. 1791. A sweepstakes of 100 guineas each took place in Kensington Gardens, which came off as follows : Lord Paget (the present Marquis of Anglesea) Honourable Mr. Lamb ..... Captain, now General Grosvenor Lord Barrymore 2 3 4 A mealman at Isleworth walked five miles within three quarters of an hour, for a wager of 50 guineas; and, although he was seized with a cholic on the road, had six seconds to spare. Mr. Eyre, of York, who undertook to walk twenty miles a day for three weeks, accomplished his task with apparent ease. Aspinal, the celebrated Pontefract pedestrian, who undertook to walk fifty miles in twelve hours, performed the same on Aberford Common in nine hours and fifty-nine minutes. Aspinal, in the same year, walked from York to London and back again in six days. 1792.-A young boy, aged twelve, for a trifling wager, ran twice round the city walls of Chester (three miles and a half) in twenty-three minutes. As a set-off to this juvenile performance, we must mention that a gentleman, aged seventy-seven years, walked from London to Liverpool in four days ; which is above fifty miles a day. This gentleman, whose name was Eustace, eleven years previous, walked from Chester to London in four days, which is above sixty miles a day. The first day he performed ninety miles. John Hoole, a hair-dresser of Twickenham, ran from the "Three Tuns" at that place to Hyde Park Corner (ten miles) in one hour and eighteen minutes. The odds were fifteen to ten that he did not do it in an hour and a half. 1794.-An officer of the 86th Regiment undertook, for a considerable wager, to walk one hundred and fifty-six miles in seventy-two hours, which he accomplished, on the road from Shrewsbury to the Iron Bridge, in an hour and three quarters under the stipulated time. A man of fifty-five years of age completed his task of a hundred miles within six minutes of twenty-four hours on Clapham Common. We cannot conclude this notice of "bygone" pedestrians without alluding to Mr. Powell, who flourished nearly a century ago. Foster Powell was born in the year 1736 at Horsforth, near Leeds, and, being brought up to the law, was clerk to a London attorney. While in that employment his master had some legal business at York, and the young clerk was despatched with some leases to that city, and to which place he went and returned in less than a week. He afterwards performed several feats of swiftness, especially one from London to Maidenhead Bridge (twenty-seven miles) and back in seven hours. In 1773, he made a wager of 100 guineas that he would make a journey on foot from London to York, and back again, in six days; the match to commence on some Monday in November. The following is the account, authenticated by Mr. Powell :-"I set out from Hick's Hall, London, on the 29th of November, 1773, about twenty minutes past twelve o'clock in the morning, for a wager of 100 guineas, which I was to perform in six days, by going to York and returning to the above place. "I got to Stamford about nine o'clock in the evening of that day Nov. 30th.-Set out from Stamford about five in Dec. 1st.-Set out from Doncaster about five in ..... Departed from York about six the same afternoon, Dec. 3rd.-Set out from Grantham at six in the Dec. 4th.-Set out from Eaton the sixth and last Total....... 394 99 FOSTER POWELL.' In his next two performances, Powell's fortunate star did not prevail. The first was in the summer of 1776, when he was beat, in a match of a mile, on Barham Downs, by Andrew Smith, a famous runner of that time; and the second was in November, 1778, when he undertook to run two miles in ten minutes, on the Lea Bridge road, and lost by half a minute. In September, 1787, Powell backed himself, for 25 guineas, to walk from the Falstaff Inn, at Canterbury, to London Bridge, and back again (one hundred and twelve miles), in four-and-twenty hours: this he accomplished, with ten minutes to spare, having done the first half of his journey in ten hours and a half. In June, 1788, he again set out from Hick's Hall for York and back, which he performed in five days nineteen hours and a quarter. On the 15th of July following he undertook, for 100 guineas, to walk a hundred miles in twenty-two hours: this he accomplished with ease. The course was from Hyde Park-corner to the fifty-mile-stone at Wolverton Hill, on the Bath road, and back again. In 1790 he took a bet of £20 guineas to £13 that he would walk to York and back in five days and eighteen hours, and which he accom. plished in one hour and fifty minutes less than the time allowed him. So little fatigued was he with this journey, that he offered to back himself to walk a hundred miles the next day, but no one felt disposed to say "Done !" In November of the same year he was beat by a publican of Windsor, named West, in a forty-mile match, on the Western-road, for 40 guineas; and shortly afterwards failed in a match from Canterbury to London, owing to the darkness of the night. In the following July he started, for the fourth time, from London to York and back, for a wager of 13 guineas, five days and fifteen hours only being allowed him. This he accomplished an hour and twentyfive minutes within his time. In August, 1792, he walked, upon the Brighton road, one mile in nine minutes, for a wager of 15 guineas, and ran it back again in five minutes and fifty-two seconds, which was eight seconds within the time allotted him. He afterwards received forfeit from his successful opponent of 1790, Mr. West: they had engaged to go four hundred miles together, on the Bath road. When Mr. Powell was in his 57th year, he offered to walk six miles in one hour, to run a mile in five minutes and a half, and to go five hundred miles in seven days. All he required was a bet of 100 guineas on the last event, and 20 upon either of the others. 238 LEATHERLUNGS THE "LEG." BY THE EDITOR. CHAP. XII.-AN AT HOME" IN ST. JAMES's. "You'll pay me the eight shillings I won of you at betting." SHAKSPEARE-Henry V. Having duly stated how, like Byron, when he meditated his epic, we were in want of a hero, and wherefore at length we selected a Leg, we digressed to give our reasons for that choice, promising to proceed in the next place to introduce him in his social character to the reader: moreover, we asserted our history would not be found wanting in its moral, and without obtruding our purpose like a field preacher-without pitchforking our philosophy into every paragragh like some people who ought to have known better-we think the course of the narrative will prove that we have not lost sight of that pledge. In the last chapter we had made our way good as far as Street, where, in the bosom of domestic felicity, and a most unexceptionable first-floor, lives Leatherlungs the Leg. At the moment he was occupied in an affair of professional economy, loud enough to be heard in the hall, indeed we might say on the other side of it; for our Leg does not belie his right to the name he inherits. While we do justice to our own politeness, by refraining to intrude upon his occupation, we will take occasion to rescue a hero from the ungentle prestige which attaches to the dwellers in furnished lodgings in England, while Suprême Bon Ton has no aspiration in Paris beyond the possession of "an apartment." As a rule, perhaps, the whole institution of civilized life has not a contrivance more fraught with unalloyed discomfort-more pregnant with abomination, than a lodging. From the harpy of the household-the landlady (O! lady, "to what base uses we may come at last!")—from the mistress, we say, all beef, beer, and brazen-face, or three-shilling black tea, gin, and bitters, to the maid-of-all-work-a cinder-fiend that never sits, or sleeps, or stands still, and seldom or ever takes sustenance-no community of social or savage life is so abhorrent to human nature, with a soul above a refuge for the destitute, as a professed lodging-housesuch as you may meet with in any of the small streets leading from the great thoroughfares of London, and scattered liberally over the suburbs. Sir Cornwallis Harris, in his late visit to the Christian Court of Shoa, gives no flattering picture of domestic life in Ethiopia, |