SPECIMENS OF THE NOTES.

SENSATION OF PLANTS.-Redi was inclined to attribute a greater degree of animation to the vegetable world, than is generally assigned it. It is difficult, perhaps impossible, to witness the sensibility of such plants as the Mimosa, and not associate with them the idea of sensation. Perhaps trees and flowers may receive a sort of dim pleasure from the air and sunshine, proportionate to the rest of their share of animal life. The stems of the vine look as vital as can well be conceived. I speak of them when they are fresh and red. A vineyard in the winter time, full of their old, crusty-looking, dry, tortuous long bodies, resembles a collection of earthy serpents. Who would suppose, that out of all that apparent drought and unfeelingness, were to come worlds of bunches of fruit, bursting with wine and joy?

STRANGE METAMORPHOSES OF ENGLISH WORDS BY FOREIGNERS.The original word for "cask" is Bellicone, which is neither more nor less than the English word Welcome! "Bellicone," says Redi, “is a new word in Tuscany, and comes from the German, who call it Wilkomb or Wilkumb. It is a glass in which they drink to the arrival of their friends. The Spaniards have got it, and call it Velicomen.”—These transmutations remind me of the arrival of my Lord Maryborough, then Mr Wellesley Pole, in France; which was announced to the wondering natives as the coming of " Milord Vesteveneypoel But see a translation of the Tra vels of Redi's master, Cosmo the Third, in England, which has been lately published. The word Vittheal (for Whitehall), which I find in Redi's works, is nothing to what the reader will find there. Kensington is called by some such impossibility as Imhinthorp.*

* Upon recollection, I think this is in Bassompiere.

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THE COMPANION.

No. XXV. WEDNESDAY, JUNE 25, 1828.

Something alone yet not alone, to be wished, and only to be found, in a friend."-SIR WILLIAM TEMPLE.

A WALK FROM DULWICH TO BROCKHAM.

IN A LETTER TO A FRIEND.

WITH AN ORIGINAL CIRCUMSTANCE OR TWO RESPECTING DR JOHNSON.

DEAR SIR,

As other calls upon my pilgrimage in this world have interrupted those weekly voyages of discovery into green lanes and rustic houses of entertainment, which you and I had so agreeably commenced, I thought I could not do better than make you partaker of my new journey, as far as pen and paper could do it. You are therefore to look upon yourself as having resolved to take a walk of twenty or thirty miles into Surrey, without knowing anything of the matter. You will have set out with us a fortnight ago, and will be kind enough to take your busts for chambermaids, and your music (which is not so easy) for the voices of stagecoachmen.

Illness, you know, does not hinder me from walking; neither does anxiety. On the contrary, the more I walk, the better and stouter I become; and I believe if everybody were to regard the restlessness which anxiety creates, as a signal from nature to get up and contend with it in that manner, they would find the benefit 25

VOL. I.

of it. This is more particularly the case, if they are lovers of nature, as well as pupils of her, and have an eye for the beauties in which her visible world abounds; and as I may claim the merit of loving her heartily, and even of tracing my sufferings (when I have them) to her cause, the latter are never so great but what she repays me with some sense of sweetness, and leaves me a certain property in the delight of others, when I have little of my own.

Neither doves nor poets can very

"Oh that I had the wings of a dove!" said the royal poet; "then would I fly away and be at rest." I believe there are few persons, who having felt sorrow, and anticipating a journey not exactly towards it, have not partaken of this sense of the desirability of remoteness. A great deal of what we love in poetry is founded upon it; nor do any feel it with more passion; than those whose sense of duty to their fellow-creatures will not allow them to regard retirement as anything but a refreshment between their tasks, and as a wealth of which all ought to partake. But David sighed for remoteness, and not for solitude. At least, if he did, the cares of the moment must have greatly overbalanced the habits of the poet. well do without a companion. Be that as it may, the writer of this epistle, who is a still greater lover of companionship than poetry (and he cannot express his liking more strongly) had not the misfortune, on the present occasion, of being compelled to do without it; and as to remoteness, though his pilgrimage was to extend little beyond twenty miles, he had not the less sense of it on that account. Remoteness is not how far you go in point of ground, but how far you feel yourself from your common-places. Literal distance is indeed necessary in some degree; but the quantity of it depends on imagination, and the nature of eircumstances. The poet who can take to his wings like a dove, and plunge into the wood nearest him, is farther off, millions of miles, in the retreat of his thoughts, than the literalist, who must get to Johnny Groat's, in order to convince himself that he is not in Edinburgh.

Almost any companion would do, if we could not make our choice, provided it loved us and was sincere. A horse is good company, if have no other you ; a dog still better. I have often thought, that I could take a child by the hand, and walk with it

But I should have to go back, to fetch some grown friends,

There were three of us on the present occasion, grown and young. We began by taking the Dulwich stage from a house in Fleet street, where a drunken man came into the tap, and was very pious. He recited hymns; asked the landlady to shake hands with him; was for making a sofa of the counter, which she prevented by thrusting his leg off with some indignation; and being hindered in this piece of jollity, he sank on his knees to pray. He was too good-natured for a Methodist; so had taken to stiff glasses. of brandy and water,

"To help him to support uneasy steps

Over the burning marle."

He said he had been "twice through the gates of hell," and by his drinking, poor fellow, he seemed to be setting out on his third adventure. We called him Sin-bad. By the way, when you were a boy, did you not think that the name of Sindbad was allegorical, and meant a man who had sinned very badly? Does not every little boy think so? One does not indeed, at that time of life, know very well what to make of the porter Hindbad, who rhymes to him; and I remember I was not pleased when I came to find out that Hind and Sind were component words, and meant Eastern and Western.'

1.

The stage took us to the Greyhound at Dulwich, where though we had come from another village almost as far off from London on the northern side, we felt as if we had newly got into the country, and eat a hearty supper accordingly. This was a thing not usual with us; but then everybody eats" in the country;"there is "the air" and besides, we had eaten little dinner, and were merrier, and "remote." On looking out of our chamber window in the morning, we remarked that the situation of the inn was beautiful, even towards the road, the place is so rich with trees; and returning to the room we had supped in, we found with pleasure that we had a window there, presenting us with a peep into rich meadows, where the haymakers were at work in their white shirts. A sunny room,