Barbara has a cold--a nasty, stuffy, choky cold; so I must do without her. Apparently I must do without Vick too. She makes a feint, indeed, of accompanying me half-way to the front gate, then sits down on her little shivering haunches, smirks, and when I call her, looks the other way, affecting not to hear. On my calling more peremptorily, "Vick! Vick!" she tucks her tail well in, and canters back to the house on three legs. So it comes to pass that I set out quite alone. I have no definite idea where to go--I walk vaguely along, following my nose, as they say, smiling foolishly, and talking to myself--now under my breath--now out loud. A strong southwest wind blows steadily in my face: it sounded noisy and fierce enough as I sat in the house; but there is no vice or malevolence in it--it is only a soft bluster. Alternate clouds and sunshine tenant the sky. The shadows of the tree-trunks lie black and defined across the road--branches, twigs, every thing--then comes a sweep of steely cloud, and they disappear, swallowed up in one uniform gray: a colorless moment or two passes, and the sun pushes out again; and they start forth distinct and defined, each little shoot and great limb, into new life on the bright ground. I laugh out loud, out of sheer jollity, as I watch the sun playing at hide-and-seek with them. What a good world! What a handsome, merry, sweetly-colored world! Unsatisfying? disappointing?--not a bit of it! It must be people's own fault if they find it so. I have walked a mile or so before I at length decide upon a goal, toward which to tend--a lone and distant cottage, tenanted by a very aged, ignorant, and feudally loyal couple--a cottage sitting by the edge of a brown common--one of the few that the greedy hand of Tillage has yet spared--where geese may still stalk and hiss unreproved, and errant-tinker donkeys crop and nibble undisturbed-- "Where the golden furze With its green thin spurs Doth catch at the maiden's gown." It is altogether a choice and goodly walk; next to nothing of the tame high-road. The path leads through a deep wooded dell; over purple plough-lands; down retired lanes.