per 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 a while, without feeling at a
loss the moment I am left by myself. Instead of a friend in a postchaise
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 o' 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 if I wore to explain to you the circumstance that has so
endeared it to me, you would only smile. Had I not better then keep it
to myself, and let it serve me to brood over, from here to yonder craggy
point, and from thence onward to the far-distant horizon? I should be
but bad company all that way, and therefore prefer being alone. I have
heard it said that you may, when the moody fit comes on, walk or ride on
by yourself, and indulge your reveries. But this looks like a breach of
manners, a neglect of others, and you are thinking all the t