evoke any violent emotion, or to affect me as of old. I say _unwelcome_, because, notwithstanding the stoicism of which I boast, I felt quite uncomfortable enough to write to my correspondent by the return of post, urging him to make one more endeavour to complete my business without my aid, and to spare, if possible, my personal attendance. I gave no reason for this wish. I did not choose to tell a falsehood, and I had hardly honesty to acknowledge, even to myself--the truth. I failed, however, in my application, and with any but a cheerful mind, I quitted London on my journey. Thirty years before I had travelled to ---- in a stupendous machine, of which now I recollect only that it seemed to take years out of my little life in arriving at its destination, and that, on its broad, substantial rear, it bore the effigy of "_an ancient Briton_." Locomotion then, like me, was in a state of infancy. On the occasion of my second visit to the city, I had hardly time to wonder at the velocity with which I was borne along. Distance was annihilated. The two hundred miles over which _the ancient Briton_ had wearisomely laboured, were reduced to twenty, and before I could satisfy myself that our journey was more than begun, my horseless coach, and fifty more besides, had actually gone over them. I experienced a nervous palpitation at the heart as I proceeded from the outskirts of the city, and grew more and more fidgety the nearer I approached the din and noise of the prosperous seat of business. I could not account for the feeling, until I detected myself walking as briskly as I could, with my eyes fixed hard upon the ground, as though afraid to glance upon a street, a house, an object which could recall the past, or carry me back to the first dark days of life. Then it was that I summoned courage, and, with a desperate effort to crush the morbid sensibility, raised myself to my full height, gazed around me, and awoke, effectually and for ever, from my dream. The city was not the same. The well-remembered thoroughfares were gone; their names extinct, and superseded by others more euphonic; the buildings, which I had carried in my mind as in a book--the thought of meeting which had given me so much pain, had been removed--destroyed, and not a brick remained which I could call a friend, or offer one warm tear, in testimony of old acquaintance. A noble street, a line of palaces--merchants' palaces--had taken to itself the room of twenty narrow ways, that, in the good old times, had met and crossed in close, but questionable, friendship. Bright stone, that in the sunlight shone brighter than itself, flanked every broad and stately avenue, denoting wealth and high commercial dignity. Every venerable association was swept away, and nothing remained of the long-cherished and always unsightly picture, but the faint shadow in my own brain--growing fainter now with every moment, and which the unexpected scene and new excitement were not slow to obliterate