d relentless drench,--
The land it soaks is putrid;"

or rather, as everything animate and inanimate is seething in warm mist,
suggesting the idea that Nature, grown old and rheumatic, is trying the
efficacy of a Thomsonian steam-box(5) on a grand scale; no sounds
save the heavy plash of muddy feet on the pavements; the monotonous,
melancholy drip from trees and roofs; the distressful gurgling of
waterducts, swallowing the dirty amalgam of the gutters; a dim,
leaden-colored horizon of only a few yards in diameter, shutting down
about one, beyond which nothing is visible save in faint line or
dark projection; the ghost of a church spire or the eidolon of a
chimney-pot,--he who can extract pleasurable emotions from the
alembic of such a day has a trick of alchemy with which I am wholly
unacquainted.

(1) From the closing air in _The Jolly Beggars,_ a cantata.
(2) "A breath thou art
Servile to all the skyey influences,
That dost this habitation, where thou keep'st
Hourly afflict."
Shakespeare: _Measure for Measure,_ act III. scene 1.
(3) "She turns and turns again, and carefully glances around
her on all sides, to see that she is safe from the eyes of
Mussulmans, and then suddenly withdrawing the yashmak she
shines upon your heart and soul with all the pomp and might of
her beauty." Kinglake's _Eothen,_ chap. iii. In a note to
_Yashmak_ Kinglake explains that it is not a mere
semi-transparent veil, but thoroughly conceals all the features
except the eyes: it is withdrawn by being pulled down.
(4) Vincenz Priessnitz was the originator of the water-cure.
After experimenting upon himself and his neighbors he took up
the profession of hydropathy and established baths at his native
place, Grafenberg in Silesia, in 1829. He died in 1851.
(5) Dr. Samuel Thomson, a New Hampshire physician,
advocated the use of the steam bath as a restorer of system
when diseased. He died in 1843 and left behind an
autobiography (_Life and Medical Discoveries_) which
contains a record of the persecutions he underwent.

Hark! a rap at my door. Welcome anybody just now. One gains nothing by
attempting to shut out the sprites of the weather. They come in at the
keyhole; they peer through the dripping panes; they insinuate themselves
through the crevices of the casement,