at I used to say of it, as the last Lord
Orford said of his stomach, that it seemed likely to survive the rest of
my person. Till now I had never felt a headache even, or any the
slightest pain, except rheumatic pains caused by my own folly. However,
I got over this attack, though it must have been verging on something
very dangerous.

The waters now changed their character--from translucent lakes shining
like mirrors they now became seas and oceans. And now came a tremendous
change, which, unfolding itself slowly like a scroll through many months,
promised an abiding torment; and in fact it never left me until the
winding up of my case. Hitherto the human face had mixed often in my
dreams, but not despotically nor with any special power of tormenting.
But now that which I have called the tyranny of the human face began to
unfold itself. Perhaps some part of my London life might be answerable
for this. Be that as it may, now it was that upon the rocking waters of
the ocean the human face began to appear; the sea appeared paved with
innumerable faces upturned to the heavens--faces imploring, wrathful,
despairing, surged upwards by thousands, by myriads, by generations, by
centuries: my agitation was infinite; my mind tossed and surged with the
ocean.

May 1818

The Malay has been a fearful enemy for months. I have been every night,
through his means, transported into Asiatic scenes. I know not whether
others share in my feelings on this point; but I have often thought that
if I were compelled to forego England, and to live in China, and among
Chinese manners and modes of life and scenery, I should go mad. The
causes of my horror lie deep, and some of them must be common to others.
Southern Asia in general is the seat of awful images and associations. As
the cradle of the human race, it would alone have a dim and reverential
feeling connected with it. But there are other reasons. No man can
pretend that the wild, barbarous, and capricious superstitions of Africa,
or of savage tribes elsewhere, affect him in the way that he is affected
by the ancient, monumental, cruel, and elaborate religions of Indostan,
&c. The mere antiquity of Asiatic things, of their institutions,
histories, modes of faith, &c., is so impressive, that to me the vast age
of the race and name overpowers the sense of youth in the individual. A
young Chinese seems to me an antediluvian man renewed. Even Englishmen,
though not bred