not see the wit of walking and talking at the same time. When I
am in the country, I wish to vegetate like the country. I am not for
criticising hedge-rows and black cattle. I go out of town in order to
forget the town and all that is in it. There are those who for this
purpose go to watering-places, and carry the metropolis with them. I
like more elbow-room, and fewer incumbrances. I like solitude, when I
give myself up to it, for the sake of solitude; nor do I ask for

"----a friend in my retreat,
Whom I may whisper solitude is sweet."

The soul of a journey is liberty, perfect liberty, to think, feel, do
just as one pleases. We go a journey chiefly to be free of all
impediments and of all inconveniences; to leave ourselves behind, much
more to get rid of others. It is because I want a little
breathing-space to muse on indifferent matters, where Contemplation

"May plume her feathers and let grow her wings,
That in the various bustle of resort
Were all too ruffled, and sometimes impair'd,"

that I absent myself from the town for awhile, without feeling at a
loss the moment I am left by myself. Instead of a friend in a
post-chaise or in a Tilbury, to exchange good things with, and vary
the same stale topics over again, for once let me have a truce with
impertinence. Give me the clear blue sky over my head, and the green
turf beneath my feet, a winding road before me, and a three hours'
march to dinner--and then to thinking! It is hard if I cannot start
some game on these lone heaths. I laugh, I run, I leap, I sing for
joy. From the point of yonder rolling cloud, I plunge into my past
being, and revel there, as the sun-burnt Indian plunges headlong into
the wave that wafts him to his native shore. Then long-forgotten
things, like "sunken wrack and sumless treasuries," burst upon my
eager sight, and I begin to feel, think, and be myself again. Instead
of an awkward silence, broken by attempts at wit or dull
common-places, mine is that undisturbed silence of the heart which
alone is perfect eloquence. No one likes puns, alliterations,
antitheses, argument, and analysis better than I do; but I sometimes
had rather be without them. "Leave, oh, leave me to my repose!" I have
just now other business in hand, which would seem idle to you, but is
with me "very stuff of the conscience." Is not this wild rose sweet
without a comment? Does not this daisy leap to my heart set in its
coat of emerald? Yet