what seemed to be
his greatest trouble, both reliefs came. Sitting down one morning
resolute for work, though against the grain, his hand being out and
everything inviting to idleness, such a peal of chimes arose from the
city as he found to be "maddening." All Genoa lay beneath him, and up
from it, with some sudden set of the wind, came in one fell sound the
clang and clash of all its steeples, pouring into his ears, again and
again, in a tuneless, grating, discordant, jerking, hideous vibration
that made his ideas "spin round and round till they lost themselves in a
whirl of vexation and giddiness, and dropped down dead." He had never
before so suffered, nor did he again; but this was his description to me
next day, and his excuse for having failed in a promise to send me his
title. Only two days later, however, came a letter in which not a
syllable was written but "We have heard THE CHIMES at midnight, Master
Shallow!" and I knew he had discovered what he wanted.

Other difficulties were still to be got over. He craved for the London
streets. He so missed his long night-walks before beginning anything
that he seemed, as he said, dumbfounded without them. "I can't help
thinking of the boy in the school-class whose button was cut off by
Walter Scott and his friends. Put me down on Waterloo-bridge at eight
o'clock in the evening, with leave to roam about as long as I like, and
I would come home, as you know, panting to go on. I am sadly strange as
it is, and can't settle. You will have lots of hasty notes from me while
I am at work; but you know your man; and whatever strikes me, I shall
let off upon you as if I were in Devonshire-terrace. It's a great thing
to have my title, and see my way how to work the bells. Let them clash
upon me now from all the churches and convents in Genoa, I see nothing
but the old London belfry I have set them in. In my mind's eye, Horatio.
I like more and more my notion of making, in this little book, a great
blow for the poor. Something powerful, I think I can do, but I want to
be tender too, and cheerful; as like the _Carol_ in that respect as may
be, and as unlike it as such a thing can be. The duration of the action
will resemble it a little, but I trust to the novelty of the machinery
to carry that off; and if my design be anything at all, it has a grip
upon the very throat of the time." (8th of October.)

Thus bent upon his work, for which he never had been in more earnest
mood, he