was heard rolling up and tearing itself to ribbons on the
shingly beach like distant thunder. As for night-sounds of any sort, you
know my _sound_ sleep is the only one I am familiar with.

In the hotel at Niagara, the voice of the cataract not only roared night
and day through every chamber of the house, but the whole building
vibrated incessantly with the shock of the mighty fall. I have still
health and nerve and spirits to cope with the grand exhibitions of the
powers of Nature: the majesty and beauty of the external world always
acts as a tonic on me, and under its influence I feel as if a strong arm
was put round me, and was lifting me over stony places; and I nothing
doubt that the great anthem of the ocean would excite rather than
overpower me, however nearly it sounded in my ears.

Your description of the terrace, or parade walk, covered with my
fellow-creatures, appals my imagination much more. My sympathies have
never been half human enough, and in the proximity of one of nature's
most impressive objects I shrink still more from contact with the
outward forms of unknown humanity. However, this is merely an answer to
your description; I shall find, by creeping down the shingles, some
place below, or, by climbing the cliff, some place above, these dear men
and women, where I can be a little alone with the sea.

I observed nothing peculiar about the direction of any letter that I
have recently received from you; but then, to be sure, I am not given to
the general process, which, general as it is, always astonishes me, of
examining the direction, the date, the postmark, the signature, of the
letter I receive (as many of these, too, as possible, before opening the
epistle); I hasten to read your words as soon as I have them, and seldom
speculate as to when or where they were written, so that I really do not
know whether I have received your Hull letter or not. I do not go
thither until Monday next, and return to town the following Sunday....

Oh, my dear, what a world is this! or rather, what an unlucky experience
mine has been--in some respects--yes, in _some_ respects! for while I
write this, images of the good, and true, and excellent people I have
known and loved rise like a cloud of witnesses to shut out the ugly
vision of the moral deformity of some of those with whom my fate has
been interwoven....

I have agreed with Mrs. Humphreys to take the apartments that T----
M---- had in King Street, from the be