14 Dozing. [JULY, 



will be thinking of himself how many commissions he has performed 

 how many he has left undone and how many he intends to do. The 

 next, he will probably give to his home attractions his anxious wife, sat 

 musingly round the tea-table his favourite son George (so like his father) 

 and all the nine hundred and ninety nine pretty nothings we hear of, 

 after a brief absence. These will send his heart a long way from the 

 coach, and therefore keep him in the full enjoyment of wakefulness. But 

 this train of delectable musing is by no means exhaustless. The roll of 

 the wheels gradually becomes naturalized to the ear, and the body moves 

 in sympathy with the coach ; the road gets very monotonously barren ; the 

 lounge in the corner how suitable then to this solitary languor ! Lulled 

 here, the traveller for awhile admires the leathern trappings of the coach, 

 hums a tune perhaps, and affects a dubious whistle. Meantime the opera- 

 tions of doziness have been gently applying themselves. His eye is sated 

 with the road and the coach ; his hands become stationary on his lap ; his 

 feet supinely rested on the opposite seat ; his head instinctively motions to 

 the corner and he dozes ! A doze in the coach is the flower of dozes, 

 when you are alone. There, you may twist your person into any shape 

 you please, without the fear of discomposing a silken dress, or a nurse- 

 maid's petticoats. No boisterous arguments from snuff-taking sexagena- 

 rians: all is placid Eden-like just as a dozer's sanctorum ought to be ! 

 The only thing attendant on the doze of an inside passenger, is the great 

 chance of being suddenly aroused by the entrance of company. O tell me, 

 ye of the fine nerve, what is more vexing than to be startled from your nest 

 by the creaking slam of the steps, the bleak winter gales galloping along 

 your face, and a whole bundle of human beings pushing themselves into 

 your retreat ! There is no rose without its thorn, as myriads have said 

 before me : 



" beats Sexti, 



Vitse summa brevis SPEM nos vetat inchoare LONGAM !" 



Not all the morose sarcasms of Johnson, on the pleasures of rural life, 

 have ever weakened my capability for enjoying it at convenient intervals. 

 His antipathy to the country resembled his contempt for blank-verse he 

 could not enjoy it. I have now moped away a considerable number of 

 months in thi.s city of all things this this London. " Well ?" Pray 

 restrain yourself, reader: I am coming to the point in due season. During 

 my metropolitan existence although I am neither a tailor, or any trade, 

 or anything exactly 1 have never beheld a downright intellectual-looking 

 blade of grass. I mean much by an intellectual blade of grass. The Lon- 

 doners poor conceited creatures ! have denominated sundry portions of 

 their Babylon " fields." But I ask it in all the honest pride of sheer 

 ignorance is there the ghost even of a bit of grass to be seen in many of 

 them ? I cannot easily forget my vexation, when, after a tedious walk 

 to one of those misnomered " fields," I found nothing but a weather- 

 beaten, muggy, smoky assemblage of houses of all sizes, circumscribed by 

 appropriate filth and abundant cabbage-stumps. Innocent of London quack 

 cries, I strolled forth with the full hope of laying me down on a velvet 

 carpet of grass the birds carolling around me and, perchance, a flock of 

 lambkins, tunefully baying to their mammas ! ! " Said 1 to myself," 

 when I reached these fields, " what a fool I am !" I had contemplated a 

 doze on the grass. 



