say, "Let's look at the back of the Atlantic." I don't
quite know what I mean by that; but have a general impression that I
mean something knowing.

I am horribly used up after the Jerrold business. Low spirits, low
pulse, low voice, intense reaction. If I were not like Mr. Micawber,
"falling back for a spring" on Monday, I think I should slink into a
corner and cry.

Ever affectionately.

[Sidenote: Miss Hogarth.]

ALLONBY, CUMBERLAND, _Wednesday Night, Sept. 9th, 1857._

MY DEAR GEORGY,

* * * * *

Think of Collins's usual luck with me! We went up a Cumberland mountain
yesterday--a huge black hill, fifteen hundred feet high. We took for a
guide a capital innkeeper hard by. It rained in torrents--as it only
does rain in a hill country--the whole time. At the top, there were
black mists and the darkness of night. It then came out that the
innkeeper had not been up for twenty years, and he lost his head and
himself altogether; and we couldn't get down again! What wonders the
Inimitable performed with his compass until it broke with the heat and
wet of his pocket no matter; it did break, and then we wandered about,
until it was clear to the Inimitable that the night must be passed
there, and the enterprising travellers probably die of cold. We took our
own way about coming down, struck, and declared that the guide might
wander where he would, but we would follow a watercourse we lighted
upon, and which must come at last to the river. This necessitated
amazing gymnastics; in the course of which performances, Collins fell
into the said watercourse with his ankle sprained, and the great
ligament of the foot and leg swollen I don't know how big.

How I enacted Wardour over again in carrying him down, and what a
business it was to get him down; I may say in Gibbs's words: "Vi lascio
a giudicare!" But he was got down somehow, and we got off the mountain
somehow; and now I carry him to bed, and into and out of carriages,
exactly like Wardour in private life. I don't believe he will stand for
a month to come. He has had a doctor, and can wear neither shoe nor
stocking, and has his foot wrapped up in a flannel waistcoat, and has a
breakfast saucer of liniment, and a horrible dabbling of lotion
incessantly in progress. We laugh at it all, but I doubt very much
whether he can go on to Doncaster. It will be a miserable blow to ou