headlong into the wave that wafts him to his native shore.  Then long-forgotten things, like “sunken wrack and sumless treasuries,” burst upon my eager sight, and I begin to feel, think, and be myself again.  Instead of an awkward silence, broken by attempts at wit or dull commonplaces, mine is that undisturbed silence of the heart which alone is perfect eloquence.  No one likes puns, alliterations, antitheses, argument, and analysis better than I do; but I sometimes had rather be without them.  “Leave, oh, leave me to my repose!” I have just now other business in hand, which would seem idle to you, but is with me “very stuff o’ the conscience.”  Is not this wild rose sweet without a comment?  Does not this daisy leap to my heart set in its coat of emerald?  Yet if I were to explain to you the circumstance that has so endeared it to me, you would only smile.  Had I not better, then, keep it to myself, and let it serve me to brood over, from here to yonder craggy point, and from thence onward to the far-distant horizon?  I should be but bad company all that way, and therefore prefer being alone.  I have heard it said that you may, when the moody fit comes on, walk or ride on by yourself and indulge your reveries.  But this looks like a breach of manners, a neglect of others, and you are thinking all the time that you ought to rejoin your party.  “Out upon such half-faced fellowship,” say I. I like to be either entirely to myself, or entirely at the disposal of others; to talk or be silent, to walk or sit still, to be sociable or solitary.  I was pleased with an observation of Mr. Cobbett’s that he thought it a bad French custom to drink our wine with our meals, and that an Englishman ought to do only one thing at a time.  So I cannot talk and think, or indulge in melancholy musing and lively conversation by fits and starts.  “Let me have a companion of my way,” says Sterne, “were it but to remark how the shadows lengthen as the sun declines.”  It is beautifully said; but, in my opinion, this continual comparing of notes interferes with the involuntary impression of things upon the mind, and hurts the sentiment.  If you only hint what you feel in a kind of dumb-show, it is insipid:  if you have to explain it, it is making a toil of a pleasure.  You cannot read the book of nature without being perpetually put to the trouble of translating it for the benefit of others.  I am for this synthetical method on a journey in preference to the analytical.  I am content to lay in a stock of ideas then, and to examine and anatomise them afterwards.  I want to see my vague notions float like the down of the thistle before the breeze, and not to have them entangled in the briars and thorns of controversy.  For once, I like to have it all my own way; and this is impossible unless you are alone, or in such company as I do not covet.  I have no objection to argue a point with any one for twenty miles of measured road, but not for pleasure.  If you remark the scent of a bean-field