SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.


PREPARATIONS FOR A JOURNEY.


I am fond of travelling: yet I never undertake a journey without
experiencing a vague feeling of melancholy. There is to me something
strangely oppressive in the preliminaries of departure. The packing of a
small valise; the settlement of accounts--justly pronounced by Rabelais
a _blue-devilish_ process; the regulation of books and papers;--in
short, the whole routine of valedictory arrangements, are to me as a
nightmare on the waking spirit. They induce a mood of last wills and
testaments--a sense of dislocation, which, next to a vacuum, Nature
abhors--and create a species of moral decomposition, not unlike that
effected on matter by chemical agency. It is not that I have to lament
the disruption of social connexions or domestic ties. This, I am aware,
is a trial sometimes borne with exemplary fortitude; and I was lately
edified by the magnanimous unconcern with which a married friend of mine
sang the last verse of "Home! sweet home!" as the chaise which was to
convey him from the _burthen_ of his song drove up to the door. It does
not become a bachelor to speculate on the mysteries of matrimonial
philosophy; but the feeling of pain with which _I_ enter on the task of
migration has no affinity with individual sympathies, or even with
domiciliary attachments. My landlady is, without exception, the ugliest
woman in London; and the locality of Elbow-lane cannot be supposed
absolutely to spellbind the affection of one occupying, as I do,
solitary chambers on the third floor.

The case, it may be supposed, is much worse when it is my lot to take