fear of discomposing a silken dress, or a nursemaid's petticoats. No
boisterous arguments from snuff-taking sexagenarians: 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:--

----"O beate Sexti,
Vitae 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 this 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, nor any trade, nor anything exactly--I have never beheld a
downright intellectual-looking blade of grass. I mean much by an
intellectual blade of grass. The Londoners--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