stions of a complicated
character have always affected me, as the inside of a letter seems to
have struck Tony Lumkin,--"all buzz." I start with the most loyal desire
to be acute and penetrating; I set myself to my task with as honest
a disposition to do my best as ever man did; I say, "Now, Potts, no
self-indulgence, no skulking; here is a knotty problem, here is a case
for your best faculties in their sharpest exercise;" and if any one come
in upon me about ten minutes after this resolve, he will see a man who
could beat Sancho Panza in sleeping!

Of course this tendency has often cost me dearly; I have missed
appointments, forgotten assignations, lost friends through it. My
character, too, has suffered, many deeming me insupportably indolent, a
sluggard quite unfit for any active employment. Others, more mercifully
hinting at some "cerebral cause," have done me equal damage; but there
happily is an obverse on the medal, and to this somnolency do I ascribe
much of the gentleness and all the romance of my nature. It is your
sleepy man is ever benevolent, he loves ease and quiet for others as for
himself. What he cultivates is the tranquil mood that leads to slumber,
and the calm that sustains it. The very operations of the mind in sleep
are broken, incoherent, undelineated,--just like the waking occupations
of an idle man; they are thoughts that cost so little to manufacture,
that he can afford to be lavish of them. And now--Good-night!

CHAPTER XIII. I CALL AT THE BRITISH LEGATION.

Breakfast over, I took a walk through the town. Though in a measure
prepared for a scene of unbustling quietude and tranquillity, I must
own that the air of repose around, far surpassed all I had imagined. The
streets through which I sauntered were grass-grown and untrodden; the
shops were but half open; not an equipage, nor even a horseman was to be
seen. In the Platz, where a sort of fruit-market was held, a few vendors
of grapes, peaches, and melons sat under large crimson umbrellas, but
there seemed few purchasers, except a passing schoolboy, carefully
scanning the temptations in which he was about to invest his kreutzer.

The most remarkable feature of the place, however, and it is one which,
through a certain significance, has always held its place in my memory,
was that, go where one would, the palace of the Grand-Duke was sure to
finish the view at one extremity of the street. In fact, every alley
converged to this one cen