1827.] Dosing. 13 



I have found nothing more tantalizing than the endeavour to restrain from 

 an occasional doze during church-time. After a certain period, I have 

 perceived the parson diminishing, like a phantasmagoric image all the 

 ladies' black bonnets sinking away, like a cluster of clouds and (shame 

 on the confession !) I have performed head-worship to the front of my 

 seat, instead of keeping an immoveable, post-like position, before his 

 reverence. However, a church doze is seldom admired by the wakeful. 

 Should an embryo snore escape from one's nose (and this is possible), some 

 old grandam, or an upright piece of masculine sanctity, is sure to rouse 

 you : the former will either hem you into awakening shame, or drop her 

 prayer-book on the floor ; the latter will most likely thump the same with 

 the imperative tip of his boot. How horridly stupid one seems after being 

 aroused ! The woman eyes you with the most piquant, self-justifying 

 sneer possible ; while all her little IMMACULATES, if she have any, look at 

 you like so many hissing young turkey-cocks; and as for the man bless 

 his holiness ! he'd. frown you down to Hades at once. 



" My heart leaps up " when I behold a stage-coach that snug, panel- 

 painted, comfortable, wheel- whirl ing " thing of life." O ye days of 

 juvenilian sensibilities ye eye-feeding, heart-rising scenes of remembered 

 felicity ! how glorious was the coach at the school door ! The whip - 

 Ajax Mastigoferos never had such a powerful one as the modern Jehu ! 

 The spokes of the wheels they were handled with admiring fingers I 

 That Jupiter-like throne, the coach-box who would not have risked his 

 neck to have been seated on it ? When all was " right," how eloquent the 

 lip-music of coachee ! how fine the introductory frisks of the horses' tails, 

 and the arching plunge of the fore-foot no rainbow-curve ever was so 

 beauteous! 4< Oh, happy days ! who would not be a boy again ?" But 

 away with my puerilities. I intend the reader to take a doze in that com- 

 fortable repository for the person the inside of a coach. 



With all the reckless simplicity of boyhood, I maintain that travelling 

 by coach is by no means the least of our sublunary pleasures. Man is a 

 wheelable animal as well as walking one. Winter is the time for a nice 

 inside jaunt. What divine evaporations from the coachman's muzzle ! 

 What a joyous creak in the down-flying steps ! and, oh ! that comfortable 

 alertness with which we deposit ourselves in the padded corner, and fold 

 our coat-flaps over our knees, glance at the frosty steam of the window ; and 

 then, quite CL la Tityre, repose our recumbent bodies at our ease ! Such 

 moments as these are snatches of undefinable bliss. It would appear pro- 

 bable, that a coach was a very inconvenient place for a doze : the atten- 

 dant bustle, tho whip-smacks, bickering wheels, and untranquiljizing 

 jolts 



" Like angels' visits, few and far between," 



are not calculated for sleepiness. Notwithstanding these correlative inter- 

 ruptions, a doze in the coach is by no means uncommon, even in the day- 

 time. Let us examine this a little more intellectually. 



Suppose a man is returning to his friends, with a mind composed, and 

 "all his business settled." (By-the-bye, how vastly comprehensive this 

 speech is !) Suppose he has entered the coach about four in the afternoon, 

 and, by rare luck, finds he is, for the present, the only inside passenger. 

 Such a man, I say, will be likely to doze before twenty miles have run 

 under the coach-wheels speaking Hibernice. For the first half-hour, he 



