No need there is of vulgar Shout,
Bells, Cannons, Trumpets, Fife, and Drum,
And Soldiers marching all about,
To let Us know that Peace is come.
[Pg 344]
Oh mild should be the Signs and meek,
Sweet Peace’s Advent to proclaim!
Silence her noiseless Foot should speak,
And Echo should repeat the same.
Lo! where the Soldier walks, alas!
With Scars received on Foreign Grounds;
Shall we consume in Coloured Glass
The Oil that should be pour’d in Wounds?
The bleeding Gaps of War to close,
Will whizzing Rocket-Flight avail?
Will Squibs enliven Orphans’ Woes?
Or Crackers cheer the Widow’s Tale?
SKETCHES ON THE ROAD.
THE MORNING CALL.
I CANNOT conceive any prospect more agreeable to a weary traveller than the approach to Bedfordshire. Each valley reminds him of Sleepy Hollow, the fleecy clouds seem like blankets, the lakes and ponds are clean sheets; the setting sun looks like a warming-pan. He dreams of dreams to come. His travelling-cap transforms to a night-cap, the coach lining feels softlier squabbed; the guard’s horn plays “Lullaby.” Every flower by the road-side is a poppy. Each jolt of the coach is but a drowsy stumble up stairs. The lady opposite is the chamber-maid; the gentleman beside her is Boots. He slides into imaginary slippers; he winks and nods flirtingly at Sleep, so soon to be his own. Although the wheels may be rattling into vigilant Wakefield, it appears to him to be sleepy Ware, with its great Bed, a whole County of Down, spread
[Pg 345]
 “all before him where to choose his place of rest.”
It was in a similar mood, after a long dusty droughty dog-day’s journey, that I entered the Dolphin, at Bedhampton. I nodded in at the door, winked at the lights, blinked at the company in the coffee-room, yawned for a glass of negus, swallowed it with my eyes shut, as though it had been “a pint of nappy,” surrendered my boots, clutched a candlestick, and blundered, slipshod, up the stairs to number nine.
Blessed be the man, says Sancho Panza, who first invented sleep: and blessed be heaven that he did not take out a patent, and keep his discovery to himself. My clothes dropped off me: I saw through a drowsy haze the likeness of a four-poster: “Great Nature’s second course” was spread before me; and I fell to without a long grace!
Here’s a body—there’s a bed!
There’s a pillow—here’s a head!
There’s a curtain—here’s a light!
There’s a puff—and so Good Night!
It would have been gross improvidence to waste more words on the occasion; for I was to be roused up again at four o’clock the next morning to proceed by the early coach. I determined, therefore, to do as much sleep within the interval as I could; and in a minute, short measure, I was with that mandarin, Morpheus, in his Land of Nod.
How intensely we sleep when we are fatigued! Some as sound as tops, others as fast as churches. For my own part I must have slept as fast as a Cathedral,—as fast as Young Rapid wished his father to slumber: nay as fast as the French veteran who dreams over again the whole Russian campaign while dozing in his sentry-bo............