hearers look pale at one another, and ask, in vain, "who spoke ?" "We have the receipt of fern-seed; we walk invisible." In all places, in all companies, we pass undiscovered and undiscoverable. From the shop of our publisher, our oracular cave, floweth forth, broad, strong, resistless, the stream of our thought, but "none may see its secret fountain." We can at pleasure soothe, praise, tickle, scourge, bully, or terrify the multitude: the sway of Mr. Van Amburgh over his lions sinks into utter insignificance when compared with the dominion we exercise over that "many-headed monster," the public. We can put forth our pet notions and opinions to the world, regardless of the sneer of the critic: and, oh! privilege most dear to our vanity! we can talk of ourselves to our hearts' content, without a soul being able to turn round upon us, and cry out against our abominable egotism.

Can talk of ourselves, said we? Ay, and we will too! It is the privilege of old age, and we don't see why it should not be that of old acquaintance. And we, gentle reader, have made some progress towards both. Many a chapter have we written for you; we will have one for ourselves before we part. We know not how you may pass your time, when not engaged in reading the Carthusian, but we will tell you how we pass ours. You may, we hope you will, sympathize with us. You may

smile at us, or, worse still, you may sneer at us: but turn up your nose and curl up your lip as you will, we cannot help flattering ourselves, that you will, inwardly at any rate, acknowledge, ere we have done with you, that, “be it a weakness, it deserves some praise.”

We are, to our shame be it spoken, villanously given to vagabondizing. We love to start forth, with our stick and our spaniel, (we have walked with far less enter

taining companions in our time,) to start forth, we say ; why we know not, where we are as ignorant as the babe unborn; roaming wherever the fancy of the passing moment may lead us, sure of finding at every twenty steps, some fresh and richly varied "bit," as a painter would say, of scenery, some breezy hill to climb, some furze-clad common to wander over, or some secluded bank or inviting stile on which to take our seat, twirl our stick, pat our doggie, and whistle the air of our favourite ballad. Whistle? nay, break forth into absolute song, putting our very heart and soul into the tones of a voice naturally none of the most lulling, till perchance the sudden appearance of some casual roamer like ourselves brings an abrupt conclusion to our strain, and a more than usual redness to our cheeks, making us look as foolish as though we had been detected in paying clandestine attentions to our right-hand neighbour's wife, or our left-hand neighbour's poultry-yard. The

Often walking, not unseen,

By hedge-row elms, on hillocks green,'

is exactly to our taste, with the omission of the negative. Not that we entertain, or profess to entertain, any morbid, fiddle-faddle disgust to the companionship of our kind; for we look upon "the hum of human cities" as anything but "torture;" but it is an especial, and we hope not unpardonable, ingredient in our idiosyncrasy, (there's a hard word for you, gentle reader!) that we love to walk alone, to ride alone, to read alone, to write alone at all other times we care not of how large a circle we are the centre, provided only that we sustain no corporal pressure or inconvenience, for we are somewhat large and bulky of frame, and love plenty of room to stretch our legs. But we are digressing. En avant,

Y

gentle reader! we have stopped in our walk too long. We do not care "to meet the sun upon the upland lawn," for, to tell the honest truth, we have a decided antipathy to early rising; and though "brushing with hasty steps the dew away" may be very poetical, we have an unshaken conviction that it is at the same time very unhealthy. We wait till the earth is dressed for the day, and presume not to interrupt her in her ablutions. But when we do start, most genuine, unadulterated saunterers are we. We are 66 michers, and eat blackberries;" and, truly, if we did not, we should very often well nigh starve, for we are sadly oblivious of domestic times and seasons, and manifold are the lectures which we endure from our justly-indignant better half on the irregularity of our habits, and equally manifold our own promises and vows of amendment. But alas! when we have once taken three steps from our halldoor, nipped off with our staff the head of some unoffending thistle or dandelion, and inflicted on Dash a sound stripe across his latter end for presuming to jump against our clean Russia-ducks, (for which he fulfils the somewhat ungallant proverb touching spaniels, walnuttrees, and the ladies, and loves us all the more,) then do we" annihilate both time and space," without calling in the gods to our assistance. Clocks and watches are to us as things that are not; and as we entertain a most devout hatred for a high road, we are seldom recalled to a consciousness on such matters by the unwelcome apparition of a monitory milestone.

Yet do we ever in our rambles preserve a vague and dreamy apprehension of the powers domestic whose ire we are gradually awakening, and seldom do we return unloaded with any placatory offering. Insensibly, as it do we wend our way by some well-known "bank

were,

whereon the wild thyme grows," over "faint primrose beds," and along by the haunts of the "nodding violet." Many a time hath the churlish dog-rose torn our hapless fingers while wooing to our button-hole its fragrant blossoms; and not unfrequently have we been doomed to smart under the vengeance of the "yellow bee," as we plundered him of his much-loved honeysuckle. Cowslip and blue-bell, the wild convolvolus, the "light harebell,” and the heath-flowers "of all hue" in their myriad varieties, well do we know where to find them, and how to employ them. Many is the frown which has, as we presented our sylvan offering, subsided into what would have been, but for very shame's sake, an approving smile many the "cut and dried" rebuke, which has evaporated, at our approach laden with "sweets to the sweet," into a gently-expressed wonderment as to "how we possibly can be so forgetful!"

We do verily believe that there is not a square foot of land for ten miles round which is not as familiar to our eyes as the garden-plot before our parlour-window. We know the "whereabouts" of the wild strawberry-beds as well as of those which our own hands have planted ; and we would back ourselves to find out the ripe nuts as soon as any squirrel in the forest. A very lynx-eye have we for a sloe-bush; and not a sour old crab-apple is there but serves us for a land-mark, though we have too much respect for the comfort of our inner man to cultivate a more intimate acquaintance with its produce. Each and all of them do we periodically visit, and at every such visit does our fondness for them augment; we are happy in their flourishing, and sorrowful in their decay for a trampled bush we mourn for a week, and for a felled tree we "go about heavily" for a month. With all our soul do we hate a fox-hunter! Much as

we love dogs and music, we would sooner walk ten miles the other way than hear the winding of his horn, or the yelping of his pack! Verily the spirit of Samuel Johnson looketh down kindly upon us, for we hate our Nimrod well: and the sententious old lexicographer loved "a good hater." Little love hath he for that in which our soul delighteth; little love, said we? nay, rather much hate; for wrongfully and despitefully doth he entreat our well-favoured old gossip Dame Nature! Is it not he that, with his trampling brute, turneth the smooth, green forestwalk into a tract of foul, filthy, squashy, impenetrable muddiness? Is it not he that curseth a high hedge, and blasphemeth on the bank of a broad stream? When looketh he over a wide-spread plain but to rejoice in the hope it affordeth of an unchecked run? Wherefore casteth he his regards upon dingle, copse, or bosky dell, save to calculate how many victims of future slaughter may therein have their lurking-place? To him a flower garden is a waste and a wilderness, a thing "scentless and dead;" and a tod's hole an Eden rife with Sabaan odours. Some slight kindly feeling, indeed, hath he for "the last rose of summer," but alas! it is only because it marks the approach of his season of annual murder. Very bitterly doth he abhor that Kalydor of nature, a heavy dew: with evil eye doth he look upon the silver hairs of the old acquaintance of our boyhood, whom we are still wont to call familiarly and lovingly "Jacky Frost." Lend us your ears, all ye whose gentler spirits are now holding commune with ours, all ye who take delight in sweet sounds and sweet sights, and sweet odours: lend us your ears, and hate him as we do, when we tell you, that the very pair of those organs which flank our own particular head have heard him gnashing his teeth, and bemoaning himself that the scent of his destined victim