In general, a good thing spoils out-of-door prospects:  it should be reserved for table-talk.  Lamb is for this reason, I take it, the worst company in the world out of doors; because he is the best within.  I grant there is one subject on which it is pleasant to talk on a journey, and that is, what one shall have for supper when we get to our inn at night.  The open air improves this sort of conversation or friendly altercation, by setting a keener edge on appetite.  Every mile of the road heightens the flavour of the viands we expect at the end of it.  How fine it is to enter some old town, walled and turreted, just at approach of night-fall, or to come to some straggling village, with the lights streaming through the surrounding gloom; and then, after inquiring for the best entertainment that the place affords, to “take one’s ease at one’s inn”!  These eventful moments in our lives’ history are too precious, too full of solid, heartfelt happiness to be frittered and dribbled away in imperfect sympathy.  I would have them all to myself, and drain them to the last drop:  they will do to talk of or to write about afterwards.  What a delicate speculation it is, after drinking whole goblets of tea—­

  The cups that cheer, but not inebriate—­

and letting the fumes ascend into the brain, to sit considering what we shall have for supper—­eggs and a rasher, a rabbit smothered in onions, or an excellent veal cutlet!  Sancho in such a situation once fixed on cow-heel; and his choice, though he could not help it, is not to be disparaged.  Then, in the intervals of pictured scenery and Shandean contemplation, to catch the preparation and the stir in the kitchen (getting ready for the gentlemen in the parlour). Procul, O procul este profani! These hours are sacred to silence and to musing, to be treasured up in the memory, and to feed the source of smiling thoughts hereafter.

A GARDEN IDYLL
[Sidenote:  Austin Dobson]

  A LADY A POET

  THE LADY

  Sir Poet, ere you crossed the lawn
    (If it was wrong to watch you, pardon),
  Behind this weeping birch withdrawn,
    I watched you saunter round the garden. 
  I saw you bend beside the phlox,
    Pluck, as you passed, a sprig of myrtle,
  Review my well-ranged hollyhocks
    Smile at the fountain’s slender spurtle;

  You paused beneath the cherry-tree,
    Where my marauder thrush was singing,
  Peered at the bee-hives curiously,
    And narrowly escaped a stinging;
  And then—­you see, I watched—­you passed
    Down the espalier walk that reaches
  Out to the western wall, and last,
    Dropped on the seat before the peaches.

  What was your thought?  You waited long. 
    Sublime or graceful,—­grave,—­satiric? 
  A Morris Greek-and-Gothic song? 
    A tender Tennysonian lyric? 
  Tell me.  That garden-seat shall be,
    So long as speech renown disperses,
  Illustrious as the spot where he—­
    The gifted Blank—­composed his verses.