quiet, our remote five miles, and a pleasant subject (the Poetry of British Ladies) enabled the editorial part of us to go comfortably to our morning's task; after which we left the inn to proceed on our journey. We had not seen Dulwich for many years, and were surprised to find it still so full of trees. It continues, at least in the quarter through which we passed, to deserve the recommendation given it by Armstrong, of

"Dulwich, yet unspoil'd by art."

He would have added, had he lived now, that art had come, even to make it better. It was with real pain, that two lovers of the fine arts were obliged to coast the walls of the college, without seeing the Gallery; but we have vowed a pilgrimage very shortly to those remoter places, there to be found; to wit, the landscapes of Claude, and the faces of Leonardo da Vinci; and we shall make report of it, to save our character. We know not whether it was the sultriness of the day, with occasional heavy clouds, but we thought the air of Dulwich too warm, and pronounced it a place of sleepy luxuriance. So it appeared to us that morning; beautiful however, and "remote;" and the thought of old Allan, Shakspeare's playmate, made it still

more so

We remember in our boyhood, seeing Sir Francis Bourgeois (the bequeather of the Dulwich pictures) in company with Mr West, in the latter's gallery in Newman street. He was in buckskins and boots, the dandy dress of that time; and appeared to us a lively, good-natured man, with a pleasing countenance; probably because he said something pleasant of us. He confirmed it with an oath, which startled us, but did not alter our opinion. Ever afterwards we had an inclination to like his pictures, which we believe were not very good; and unfortunately, with whatever gravity he might paint, his oath and his buckskins would never allow us to consider him a serious person; so that it somewhat surprised us to hear, that M. Desenfans had bequeathed him his gallery out of pure regard, and still more, that Sir Francis, when he died, had ordered his own remains to be gathered to those of his benefactor and Madame Desenfans, and all three buried in the society of the pictures they loved. For the first time, we began to think that his pictures must have contained more than was found in them, and that

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we had done wrong (as it is very customary to do) to the gaiety of his manners. If there was vanity in the bequest, as some have thought, it was at least a vanity accompanied with touching cir stances and an appearance of a very social taste; and as most people have their vanities, it might be as well for them to think what sort of accompaniments exalt or degrade theirs, or render them purely dull and selfish. As to the Gallery's being "out of the way," especially for students, I am of a different opinion, and for two reasons; first, that no gallery, whether in or out of the way, can ever produce great artists;-nature, and perhaps the very want of a gallery, always settling that matter, before galleries are thought of; and second, because in going to see the pictures in á beautiful country village, people get out of their town commonplaces, and are better prepared for the perception of other beauties, and of the nature that makes them all. Besides, there is probably something to pay on a jaunt of this kind, and yet of a different sort from payments at a door. There is no illiberal demand at Dulwich for a liberal pleasure; but then "the inn" is inviting; people eat and drink, and get social; and the warmth which dinner and a glass diffuses, helps them to rejoice doubly in the warmth of the sunshine and the pictures, and in the fame of the great and generous.

Leaving Dulwich for Norwood (where we rejoiced to hear that some of our old friends the Gipsies were still extant) we found the air very refreshing as we ascended towards the church of the latter village. It is one of the dandy modern churches (for they deserve no better name) standing on an open hill, as if to be admired. It is pleasant to see churches instead of Methodist chapels, because any moderate religion has more of real Christianity in it, than contumelious opinions of God and the next world; but there is a want of taste, of every sort, in these new churches. They are not picturesque, like the old ones; they are not humble; they are not what they are so often miscalled, classical. A barn is a more classical building, than a church with a fantastic steeple to it. In fact, a barn is of the genuine classical shape, and only wants a stone covering, and pillars about it, to become a Temple of Theseus. The classical shape is the shape of simple utility and beauty. Sometimes we see it in the body of the modern church; but then

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a steeple must be put on it; the artist must have something of his own; and having in fact nothing of his own, he first puts a bit of a steeple, which he thinks will not be enough, then another bit, and then another; adds another fantastic ornament here and there to his building, by way of rim or " border, like;" and so, having put his pepper-box over his pillars, and his pillars over his pepper-box, he pretends he has done a grand thing, while he knows very well that he has only been perplexed and a bricklayer. For a village, the old picturesque church is the proper thing, with its tower and its trees, as at Hendon and Finchley; or its spire, as at Beckenham. Classical beauty is one thing; Gothic or Saxon beauty is another; quite as genuine in its way, and in this instance more suitable. It has been well observed, that what is called classical architecture, though of older date than the Gothic, really does not look so old,-does not so well convey the sentiment of antiquity; that is to say, the ideal associations of this world, however ancient, are far surpassed in the reach of ages by those of religion, and the patriarchs, and another world; not to mention, that we have been used to identify them with the visible old age of our parents and kindred; and that Greek and Roman architecture, in its smoothness and polish, has an unfading look of youth. It might be thought, that the erection of new churches on the classical principle (taking it for granted that they remind us more of Greek and Roman temples, than of their own absurdity) would be favourable to the growth of liberality; that at least, liberality would not be opposed by it, whereas the preservation of the old style might tend to keep up old notions. We do not think so, except inasmuch as the old notions would not be unfavourable to the new. New opinions ought to be made to grow as kindly as possible out of old ones, and should preserve all that they contain of the affectionate and truly venerable. We could fancy the most liberal doctrines preached five hundred years hence in churches precisely like those of our ancestors, and their old dust ready to blossom into delight at the arrival of true Christianity. But these new, fine, heartless-looking, showy churches, neither one thing nor the other, have, to our eyes, an appearance of nothing but worldliness and a job.

We descended into Streatham by the lane leading to the White

Lion; the which noble beast, regardant, looked at us up the narrow passage, as if intending to dispute rather than invite our approach to the castle of his hospitable proprietor. On going nearer, we found that the grimness of his aspect was purely in our imaginations, the said lordly animal having in fact a countenance singularly humane, and very like a gentleman we knew once of the name of Collins. Not the Collins that your friends are acquainted with, but another.

It not being within our plan to accept Collins's invitation, we turned to the left, and proceeded down the village, thinking of Dr Johnson. Seeing however an aged landlord at the door, we stepped back to ask him if he remembered the Doctor. He knew nothing of him, nor even of Mr Thrale; having come late, he said, to those parts. Resuming our way, we saw, at the end of the village, a decent-looking old man, with a sharp eye, and a hale countenance, who with an easy self-satisfied air, as if he had worked enough in his time, and was no longer under the necessity of overtroubling himself, sat indolently cracking stones in the road. We asked him if he knew Dr Johnson; and he said, with a jerk up of his eye, "Oh yes;I knew him well enough." Seating myself on one side of his trench of stones, I proceeded to have that matter out with Master Whatman (for such was the name of my informant.) His information did not amount to much, but it contained one or two points which I do not remember to have met with, and every addition to our knowledge of such a man is valuable. Nobody will think it more so than yourself, who will certainly yearn over this part of my letter, and make much of it. The following is the sum total of what was related. Johnson, he said, wore a silk-waistcoat embroidered with silver, and all over snuff. The snuff he carried loose in his waistcoat pocket, and would take a handfull of it out with one hand, and help himself to it with the other. He would sometimes have his dinner brought out to him in the park, and set on the ground; and while he was waiting for it, would lie idly, and cut the grass with a knife. His manners were very goodnatured, and sometimes so childish, that people would have taken him for "an ideot, like." His voice was "low."-"Do you mean low in a gruff sense?"-"No; it was rather feminine."-"Then perhaps, in one sense of the word, it

was high.""Yes, it was."-" And gentle?"-" Yes, very gentle." (This, of course, was to people in general, and to the villagers. When he dogmatized, it became what Lord Pembroke called a "bow-wow." The late Mr Fuseli told us the same thing of Johnson's voice; we mean, that it was "high," in contradistinction to a bass voice.) To proceed with our village historian. Our informant recurred several times to the childish manners of Johnson, saying, that he often appeared "quite simple,”—“ just like a child,”—“almost foolish, like." When he walked, he always seemed in a hurry. His walk was "between a run and a shuffle.” (Master Whatman was here painting a good portrait. I have often suspected, that the best likeness of Johnson was a whole length cengraving of him, walking in Scotland, with that joke of his underneath about the stick that he lost in the isle of Mull. Boswell told him the stick would be returned. "No, Sir," replied he; "consider the value of such a piece of timber here." The manner of his walk in the picture is precisely that described by the villager.) Whatman concluded, by giving his opinion of Mrs Thrale, which he did in exactly the following words:" She gathered a good deal of knowledge from him, but does not seem to have turned it to much account." Wherever you now go about the country, you recognize the effects of that Two-penny Trash," which the illiberal affect to hold in such contempt, and are really so afraid "of. They have reason; for people now canvass their pretensions vin good set terms, who would have said nothing but Anan! to a question, thirty years back. Not that Mr Whatman discussed politics with us. Let no magnanimous Quarterly Reviewer try to get him turned out of a place on that score. We are speaking of the peasantry at large, and then, not merely of politics, but of questions of all sorts interesting to humanity; which the very clowns now discuss by the road-side, to an extent at which their former leaders would not dare to discuss them. This is one reason, among others, why knowledge must go on victoriously. Area] zeal for the truth can discuss anything:-slavery can only go the length of its chain.

"

In quitting Streatham, we met a lady on horseback accompanied by three curs and a footman; which a milk-man facetiously termed a footman and “three outriders." Entering Mitcham by the green