Non-Fiction > Uncollected essays > Volumes 33-38, 1876-1878 - Cornhill magazine > Volume 33

WALKING TOURS. 689'
meaning ; single sentences possess the ear for half an hour together ;
and the writer endears himself to you, at every page, by the nicest coin-
cidence of sentiment. It seems as if it were a book you had written
yourself in a dream ! To all we have read on such occasions we look
back with special favour. "It was on the 10th of April, 1798,"
says Hazlitt, with amorous precision, " that I sat down to a volume of
the new HHo'lse, at the Inn at Llangollen, over a bottle of sherry and
a cold chicken." I should wish to quote more, for though we are mighty
fine fellows now-a-days, we cannot write like Hazlitt. And, talking of
that, a volume of Hazlitt's essays would be a capital pocket-book on such
a journey; so would a volume of Heine's songs; and {or Tristram Shandy
I can pledge a fair expei'ience.
If the evening be fine and warm, there is nothing better in life than
to lounge before the inn door in the sunset, or lean over the parapet of
the bridge, to watch the weeds and the quick fishes. It is then, if ever,
that you taste Joviality to the full significance of that audacious word.
Your muscles are so agreeably slack, you feel so clean and so strong and
so idle, that whether you move or sit still, whatever you do is done with
pride and a kingly sort of pleasure. You fall in talk with anyone, wise
or foolish, drunk or sober. And it seems as if a hot walk purged you,
more than of anythiug else, of all narrowness and pride, and left curiosity
to play its part freely, as in a child or a man of science. You lay aside
all your own hobbies, to watch provincial humours develope themselves
before you, now as a laughable fai'ce, and now grave and beautiful like
an old tale.
Or perhaps you are left to your own company for the night, and
surly weather imprisons you by the fire. You may remember how
Burns, numbering past pleasures, dwells upon the hours when he has
been " happy thinking." It is a phrase that may well perplex a poor
modern, girt about on every side by clocks and chimes, and haunted,
even at night, by flaming dial plates. For we are all so busy, and have
so many far-off projects to realise, and castles in the fire to turn into
solid habitable mansions on a gravel soil, that we can find no time for
pleasure trips into the Land of Thought and among the Hills of Vanity.
Changed times, indeed, when we must sit all night, beside the fire, with
folded hands ; and a changed world for most of us, when we find we
can pass the hours without discontent, and be happy thinking. "We
are in such haste to be doing, to be writing, to be gathering gear, to
make our voice audible a moment in the derisive silence of eternity,
that we forget that one thing, of which these are but the ^Jarts — namely,
to live. We f\ill in love, we drink hard, we run to and fro upon the
earth like frightened sheep. And now you are to ask yourself if, when
all is done, you would not have been better to sit by the fire at home, and
be happy thinking. To sit still and contemplate, — to remember the faces
of women without desire, to be pleased by the great deeds of men without
envy, to be everything and everywhere in sympathy, and yet com nt to
VOL. xxxiii. — NO. 198. 33