SECOND PART. THE PERFORMANCE; OR, WHAT SHOULD BE DONE WHEN OUT. "Volvitur, et volvetur." HORACE. 86. Qui capit dimidium fecit ;—that is, he who puts his foot into the packet-boat at Dover, is already arrived at Geneva;—an axiom hardly appreciated as it should be, and which notwithstanding deserves to be written in uncial letters at the head of every man's journal. And who is there who has read the 71st Dictum of the preceding part, but must well know, "que ce n'est que le premier pas qui coute;" or who is there, who having made this premier pas, will not find every after-course ways of pleasant ness and peace?-and that travelling so begun, must follow on with an accelerated facility, as a body once set in motion rushes down an inclined plane of itself? 87. And now stand we on board our steamer, and may chew over our reflections at leisure. It is a pleasant sight-and I could quote Lord Byron to prove it—to see sails, and ropes, and flags, and to have neither sickness nor the fear of it to take care of, in yourself or others. Now, the public mind is not quite so made up upon the beauty of steamers. A chimney has not yet had a poet to praise it; and I am afraid, unless taken up by Mr. Crabbe or Mr. Joel Barlow, it may fare like the great men and great inventions before Agamemnon. Englishmen, however, who like travelling merely for the pleasure of setting out and coming in, and are anxious to have as little interval as possible between these two pleasures, ought to pardon the means, for the sake of the end. What is the grumbling, growling, smoke, smell, shaking, quivering, shivering, dirt and danger, and all, to a man who has known what it is to have been tossed about three-and-twenty hours, instead of three-the time in which we may now steam it, pas à pas, to Calais? Give me ugliness and utility after all, as I often used to say to my Griselda ;—not indeed that I found such an axiom in the glass,—but in long rumination, and the works of the philosophers. I never saw a pretty gentleman or gentlewoman yet, that was worth much, or indeed any thing, out of a ball-room. The same may be said of sail-boats-very pretty things in port. 88. When you get on board, never mind your luggage ;-it will take care of itself, or the tars will take care of it for you. Tars are honest, and our parsons religious. It was so in my childhood, and there is no reason why things should have changed since. They would rather see you drowned, than rob you. This comes of the long peace, and the outpouring of the Spirit amongst them. 89. You should stalk three or four times |