* * * * * SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS. PREPARATIONS FOR A JOURNEY. I am fond of travelling: yet I never undertake a journey without experiencing a vague feeling of melancholy. There is to me something strangely oppressive in the preliminaries of departure. The packing of a small valise; the settlement of accounts--justly pronounced by Rabelais a _blue-devilish_ process; the regulation of books and papers;--in short, the whole routine of valedictory arrangements, are to me as a nightmare on the waking spirit. They induce a mood of last wills and testaments--a sense of dislocation, which, next to a vacuum, Nature abhors--and create a species of moral decomposition, not unlike that effected on matter by chemical agency. It is not that I have to lament the disruption of social connexions or domestic ties. This, I am aware, is a trial sometimes borne with exemplary fortitude; and I was lately edified by the magnanimous unconcern with which a married friend of mine sang the last verse of "Home! sweet home!" as the chaise which was to convey him from the _burthen_ of his song drove up to the door. It does not become a bachelor to speculate on the mysteries of matrimonial philosophy; but the feeling of pain with which _I_ enter on the task of migration has no affinity with individual sympathies, or even with domiciliary attachments. My landlady is, without exception, the ugliest woman in London; and the locality of Elbow-lane cannot be supposed absolutely to spellbind the affection of one occupying, as I do, solitary chambers on the third floor.