dens of Leicester House, the mansion of the Sidneys. Pope had a nest at Twickenham, much smaller than the fine house since built upon the site; and Thomson, another at Richmond, consisting only of the groundfloor of the present house. Everybody knows what a rural house Cowper lived in. Shenstone's was but a farm adorned, and his bad health unfortunately hindered him from enjoying it. He married a house and grounds, poor man! instead of a wife; which was being very "one-sided" in his poetry; and he found them more expensive than Miss Dolman would have been. He had better have taken poor Maria first, and got a few domestic cares of a handsome sort, to keep him alive and moving. Most of the living poets are dwellers in cottages, except Mr. Rogers, who is rich, and has a mansion looking on one of the parks; but there it does look upon grass and trees. He will have as much nature with his art as he can get. Next to a cottage of the most comfortable order, we should prefer, for our parts, if we must have servants and a household, one of those good old mansions of the Tudor age, or some such place, which looks like a sort of cottage-palace, and is full of old corners, old seats in the windows, and old memories. The servants, in such a case, would probably have grown old in one's family, and become friends; and this makes a great difference in the possible comfort of a great house. It gives it old family warmth. 249 A JOURNEY BY COACH. A Fragment: FRIEND and myself found ourselves, one showery August afternoon, sitting at the White Horse in Piccadilly, the sole occupants of the inside of an Oxford coach, and keeping such grave faces as sickness could help us to, in resistance of the almost unbearable tendency to laugh, produced by the crowd of fruit-sellers, pencil-men, pocket-book thrusters into your face, and other urgent philanthropists, who cannot conceive it possible how you can stir from London, unprovided from their especial stocks. We confess we have a regard for these men, owing to their excessive energy, and the loudness with which they pursue the interests of their wives and families. We stand it out as long as we can; perhaps buy nothing, out of a secret admiration of what we seem to be disliking, and a sense of maintaining an honorable contest, they with their tongues, and we with our faces, which we keep fixed on some object foreign to the matter in hand (the only way), and pretend to hold in a state of indifference, from which there is no hope. If we buy nothing, our conscience absolutely * The late Mr. Egerton Webbe. Alas that we should so soon and unexpectedly be forced to say "late" ! twinges us; and yet how could we more honorably treat an honorable enemy? He clearly thinks it a matter of vigor and perseverance, —a regular battle: we take him at his word, and won't at all purchase. His object is to thrust his oranges into our pockets; ours, to keep our money there: his, to be loud, importunate, and successful; ours, to be still, insipid-looking, and of course successful also. We respect him so much, that we must needs maintain his respect for ourselves; and how are we to do this if we give in? He will think us weak fellows, chaps that can't resist: so we do not care twopence for his wife and family, but intrench ourselves in a malignant benevolence towards our own. Orangery begins at home. But the only sure way is to fix your eyes on some other point, and say nothing. It is a battle won on your part by an intensity of indifference. You must not even look as if you disputed. You must fix your eyes on a shop-window; or on vacancy; or on the woman who is waiting for her husband; or the bundle which the other is hugging; or the dog who has just had a kick in the mouth, and is licking it with sedentary philosophy in a corner, looking at the same time about him; or you may watch the gentleman's face who has come half an hour too soon, but is afraid to go into a house to wait. If you look at your assailants, you only increase the vociferation; if you smile, they think you half won; if you object to the price, it is all over with you. Let your smile be internal, and your superiority immense, and not to be reached. Let them say to themselves, "That fellow must be a magistrate, or an inspector of police." At length, a sudden bustle, and some creaking evidences on the part of the coach, announce that you are about to set off. Trunks lumber and "flop" overhead; all the outside passengers are seated; the box and its steps feel the weight of the ascending charioteer, as the axle-trees of their cars groaned under the gods of Homer; an unknown individual touches his hat, informing you that he has "seen to the things; hasty anxieties are expressed for the box, the portmanteau, the carpet-bag; "all's right;" a kind domestic face is taken leave of with a moist eye (don't let any but the sick or the very masculine know it); and off we start, rattling with ponderous dance over the stones of Piccadilly. We have never seen a description of the inside of a coach. It is generally too much occupied to be thought of, except as a collection of fellow-passengers. In the present instance, we had it all to ourselves, and could reconnoitre it: nobody, in summer-time, ever thinking, it seems, of going inside, except in cases of illness, and then very seldom; particularly if it is a wet night, and the "young woman" is to be sent down cheaply to Guinea Lodge. A mail-coach, in summertime, may be defined, a hollow box, with people outside of it. For upwards of two hundred miles, we had a series of coaches nearly all to our two selves, as if each of them had been a private carriage. We lounged in them, we changed corners, we put our legs up, and got acquainted with every part and particle of their accommodation. It is a tight kind of half-soft, half-hard thing, — is the inside of a coach; more hard than soft; not quite so convenient as it looks; more 66 No than Yes," as the Italian said. The tight gray drugget looks compact and not uncomfortable, yet does not invite your headache to rest against it. The pockets seem as if they ought to contain more than they do the pair of shoes won't go quite in. The floor has neither carpet nor straw, nor is it quite even; and the places to put things in under the seat are apt to baffle your attempts, if the things are at all large; and you do not want them for trifles. If you put your gloves or a few books on the seat, in a few minutes you find them gone off upon the floor. The drugget is occasionally varied with gay colors; and the windows are generally good,-pulling up and down with facility. In short, there is a show of liberality, in which you speedily discern a skimping saving, the same spirit which spoils the building of modern houses as well as coaches. The old coaches, we may be certain, were larger and more generous, though they made less pretension, and went at a snail's pace in the comparison. We like "coaching" it, for our own parts; and should have been well content to live upon the road, in those patient antiques, instead of getting on at the present rate, and being impatient to arrive at some town, where we shall perhaps be equally restless. Not that we are insensible to the pleasure of driving fast. We like that too; it stirs the blood, and gives a sense of power: but every thing is a little too smug and hasty at present, and business-like, as though we were to be eternally getting on, and never realizing any thing but fidget and money, the means. instead of the end. We are truly in a state of transition, — of currency rather; and thank Heaven we are, |