nge caverns on the gloomy sea-shore, and down into the depths of
mines, and up to the tops of giddy heights where the unspeakable green
water was roaring, I don't know how many hundred feet below! If you
could have seen but one gleam of the bright fires by which we sat in the
big rooms of ancient inns at night, until long after the small hours had
come and gone. . . . I never laughed in my life as I did on this journey.
It would have done you good to hear me. I was choking and gasping and
bursting the buckle off the back of my stock, all the way. And Stanfield
got into such apoplectic entanglements that we were often obliged to
beat him on the back with portmanteaus before we could recover him.
Seriously, I do believe there never was such a trip. And they made such
sketches, those two men, in the most romantic of our halting-places,
that you would have sworn we had the Spirit of Beauty with us, as well
as the Spirit of Fun."[64]

The Logan Stone, by Stanfield, was one of them; and it laughingly
sketched both the charm of what was seen and the mirth of what was done,
for it perched me on the top of the stone. It is historical, however,
the ascent having been made; and of this and other examples of
steadiness at heights which deterred the rest, as well as of a subject
suggested for a painting of which Dickens became the unknown purchaser,
Maclise reminded me in some pleasant allusions many years later, which,
notwithstanding their tribute to my athletic achievements, the
good-natured reader must forgive my printing. They complete the little
picture of our trip. Something I had written to him of recent travel
among the mountain scenery of the wilder coasts of Donegal had touched
the chord of these old remembrances. "As to your clambering," he
replied, "don't I know what happened of old? Don't I still see the Logan
Stone, and you perched on the giddy top, while we, rocking it on its
pivot, shrank from all that lay concealed below! Should I ever have
blundered on the waterfall of St. Wighton, if you had not piloted the
way? And when we got to Land's-end, with the green sea far under us
lapping into solitary rocky nooks where the mermaids live, who but you
only had the courage to stretch over, to see those diamond jets of
brightness that I swore then, and believe still, were the flappings of
their tails! And don't I recall you again, sitting on the tip-top stone
of the cradle-turret over the highest battlement of the castle of