I had long been wishing to see the Isle-of-Wight; and by
the merest accident in the world I found myself there in the
beautiful autumn of eighteen hundred and twenty —.
Such weather I had never seen before out of America. It
was the very counterpart of our Indian-summer, that we brag
so much of. I do not know what other men may feel, but
I feel in the rich drowsy atmosphere of that particular season
very much as if I could make love to any body or any thing
that fell in my way. To breathe was a luxury. To tread the
green turf, to walk under the great beech-trees that overshadowed
my path, to look up at the sky and out upon the
sea, from every side of “the Garden of England,” as they
call it there—a miniature picture of England, I should call
it—was to be happy, to be charitable, and to be at peace with
all the world—authors excepted. For about a week we had
had a regular alternation of good weather and bad weather—
first a rainy day and then a fair day. Of course therefore
we were trebly happy when a fair day did arrive; and at
every change from fair to foul, we had so little to hope for
the morrow, that if the morrow turned out fair, it was enough
to make a fellow jump for joy. Every clear sunshiny day
was a miracle, after a day of white fog and heavy rain, such
as we had had every other twenty-four hours for a whole week;
and every body knows or should know that miracles do not
last for ever.

I had gone to bed with a secret fear that my trip
was all over, that I had come rather too late in the season
for such a tour as other people talked of, and that the next
day could not by any possibility be fair—the chances were a
million to one; for the day before had been a beautiful day,
and the day but one before that, and the day but one before
that; every other day for a week, while every intervening
day was bad—very bad—much too bad for the travellers of

[figure description] Page 014.[end figure description]

our age. Of course therefore, when I packed off to bed,
though I desired to be called at six on the morrow—if it
should happen to be clear—I had no great hope for the morrow.
But lo! on the morrow, when I awoke — I do
not say when they woke me, for they never do such things
in the Isle-of-Wight, nor on the way to the Isle-of-Wight, I
am sure. If you behave well, they do not like to part with
you, however much you may desire to part with them.
Nothing can persuade them to disturb your sleep—they are
too civil for that—and though you were to bribe all the chamber-maids,
all the boots, and all the porters between the Pavilion
Hotel at Brighton and the Bugle-Inn at Newport, or the
Sand-Rock Hotel (Of which a word or two more by and by),
you would have to wake yourself in the morning at a guess,
or lie half a day on the watch, afraid one hour of oversleeping
yourself, and the next, of being up too early for the waiters
and chamber-maids, or the coach, or the boot-black. What
a parenthesis — However, when I awoke, the whole
sky was bright with sunshine, the new air alive with it. I
never saw a finer day.

So I set off on my pilgrimage from Ryde,1 after running
down to the pier for the fourth time, to look at the Portsmouth
shore as it lay glittering afar off through the thin haze and
over the smooth beautifully-shadowed sea, like a sort of
aërial panorama.—Stop, reader—I must try to give you a notion
of Portsmouth as it appeared to me at the time I speak
of, whether you have or have not stood upon the pier at
Ryde, while the waters were spread before you like a sheet
of changeable satin—changeable with shadow and light and
with every hue between the deep yellow of the shore and
the deep strange blue of the sea—I must—I must—

[figure description] Page 015.[end figure description]

whatever may become of my story, my heroine, or myself. Two
or three nights before, I had been struck with the amazing
beauty of a sunset, which I saw from the Portsmouth side—it
was like the sunsets of North American; not so brilliant however,
nor dyed with such exalted and fervent hues, but like
them in the stillness of their beauty, when to look at them is
enough to bring the water into your eyes and to make your
heart run over—especially if there is a woman at your
side. I grew melancholy, and I thought how very little we
know of each other in this world, nations of nations,
neighbours of neighbours, brothers of brothers. On every
side of me was the proof; on every side of me beauty
and power that were considered peculiar to America;
a real Indian-summer—that Sabbath of the whole year; a
superb sunset, and huge trees overloaded with foliage that appeared
like a sort of gorgeous blazonry. Their colors were
not so vivid as we have them in America, nor so various, nor
did they overhang all the mountain-sides, and all the rocks, and
every foot of the earth as far as the eye could reach, with a
sort of ponderous and fluctuating shadow; but they had a
beauty of their own, a beauty that we never see in the New-World,
a sort of pomp which is not the pomp of the wilderness,
and a sort of wealth which is not the wealth of our everlasting
woods, but graver and quieter. They swell up to
the eye, cloud over cloud, with colors that we love to see
in a picture. Not so with our savage North-American landscapes—
they would startle and scare you if they were painted
with fidelity. If you had gathered your ideas of nature
from Claude or Poussin or Hobbima, or Both, or Ruysdäl,
or from any body that ever painted a landscape in Europe,
you would never be able to endure the truth in a landscape
of North-America. The bright blue, the deep fiery crimson,
the scarlet and gold, the orange and purple, the innumerable

[figure description] Page 016.[end figure description]

shades of brown would appear unworthy of a picture. You
would feel as men who have been brought up to the stage do,
when they see the terrible passions at work off the stage—
you would swear that Nature herself was unnatural.

So much for the sunset which I had seen two or three nights
before; but nothing that I saw then, though it was all that I
have described it to be, could equal the view that I had now
of the Portsmouth shore off Gosport, of the shipping, of the
military works, and of the far blue sea with a fleet riding
slowly over the dim barrier which hardly separated it from
the far blue sky—launching away, ship after ship into the
unfathomable air, as if they knew, like the huge birds of South-America
when they float over the top of the Andes—into the
sky—with all their mighty wings outspread, that there was no
power in heaven or earth able to wreck them, or shatter them,
or disturb them on their way. It was a picture to be remembered
for life—to be carried away on the heart, as if the colors
were burnt there, and the moveable beauty of a camera
obscura had been shut up for another day, or melted into the
material and fixed there for ever and ever.

The broad-striped waters were like a smooth satin, glossy
with light, and rippling with a low soft air that stole over the
green surface like a shadow. You could see it move. They
were green too—of a beautiful positive green, such as I never
saw any where else; no doubt owing to the mixture of a
sober yellowish dye produced by the sands near the shore
with the cold blue of the ocean—a blue that appeared as
black as midnight, where the waters were very deep. On
every side of me were happy faces—grown-up children
wading about on the shore, and looking as if they had never
heard the name of sorrow, as if to them life were but one
long holyday; barges and wherries dipping to the swell;
great ships at anchor with their sides turned up to the air as

[figure description] Page 017.[end figure description]

if they had been cast away in the very middle of the great
deep; and others afar off towering into the sky like prodigies,
or floating up and fading away, like so many superb creatures
of the air, each abroad on some great particular errand of its
own.

The night before there had been a gale, which prepared
the way for what I saw now. I stood on the pier and saw
it approach—the breeze sounding over the deep, the mist
rolling toward me like a heavy white smoke, the tide moving
with a steady roar, which grew louder and louder as it heaved
and weltered underneath our feet; and the Portsmouth
shore, while it seemed very high and very far off, breaking
through the mist with an effect such as I never saw before,
either in life or in poetry, either in pictures or in sleep. The
sky was cloudy—it was even dark—there was nothing above
able to produce what I saw, nothing of brightness in that part
of the above which I could see; and yet the high lands of
the opposite shore, lands that were neither high nor picturesque
when the wind was another way, were gleaming with
a sort of mysterious beauty, such as you may conceive would
be the character of a fine painting, if it were covered with a
grey gauze and lighted up from within. It was what I should
call, if I were not afraid of being charged with affectation,
a sketch by the Deity, a shadow of the landscapes that we
are to see hereafter; so faint, so ethereal was it, so unlike the
landscapes of our earth.

After looking at what I have tried to describe, and feeling
what I have described, I turned away from the multitude who
were enjoying it with me, and was about leaving the pier,
when I saw a crowd of people pressing up over the end of it
in such numbers that I stopped to look at them. It appeared
as if they were coming up out of the sea, shoal after shoal,
or as if they had found a highway under the waters, a sort of

[figure description] Page 018.[end figure description]

tunnel, such as they are to have under the bed of the Thames.
A three-year-old habit is not so easily thrown off as the
reader may imagine. I felt this, for before I well knew what
I was about, I found myself occupied once more in watching
every woman that passed me, while I stood on the top of
the broad green slippery stairs, at the bottom of which a
steam-boat and half a score of little galloping wherries were
discharging their live-stock. Off guard, if you please, reader.
I am laying no trap for you, though I am sure you
expect one. You are already more than half prepared
for a surprise, on the score of that heroine I told you
of. You foresee that I am going to find her at last among
the people of the steam-boat. No such thing, reader; I shall
do no such thing. Ah but, Mr. Author, a trap's a trap, and
you may as well catch us one way as another. You did
mean to bait for a serious, or mayhap for a pathetic interview;
but just when you had got to the pinch, either your heart failed
you, or you took it into your head that if you had been at
all anticipated by the reader it would be a capital joke to disappoint
him. So—that for your catastrophe,—snapping
your fingers—we are on our guard now. We are up to
your tricks.

No such thing reader, no such thing, I tell you. I had no
idea of the sort; for the truth of the story is, that I did see a
woman while I stood on the top of the stairs, waiting for the
approach of the boat—a woman whose air and step were
enough like the air and step of the proud creature I was in
search of, to make me feel as I had not felt for three years
before; but when I saw her face, and saw her look at me
without a tragedy-fling, I felt, I have an idea, pretty much
as the man felt, who had been very civil to a woman that
rode with him all night in a stage-coach, when there was daylight
enough to show him that the lady he had been so very

[figure description] Page 019.[end figure description]

attentive to, was a thick-lipped Ethiope. Even so with me.
I could not bear to think of the imperial step I have said
so much of, nor of the august carriage I mean to say more of,
in the same week with the intrepid eye and little prim positive
mouth, and large feet of this woman of the sea. And so—that
my dream, which I still hoarded up as a mother would a sick
babe, the more because no other creature alive would care
a fig for it, my dream of what I would still go very far to see,—
a proud woman deeply, desperately, irretrievably in love,—
might not be wrecked for ever, and so wrecked as to leave
me no joy in the recollection of it, I hurried away from the
pier, leaving the feet, and the shape, and the face that I saw,
at the bottom of the stairs, to help one another up as they
best could over their slippery path; jumped into the first
coach I saw, and never looked behind me till it stopped in
Newport at the door of the Bugle-Inn—a very good house by
the by, and the only house that I know of in that part of the
world, where a man may get so much as a comfortable breakfast,
either for love or money, to say nothing of a tolerable
dinner. I do wish I could say a fortieth part as much of the
Pavilion-Hotel,1 or the Sand-Rock Hotel,2 houses that I
mean to bestow a paragraph upon before I leave the subject,
and houses that I shall dream of, I dare say, for the rest of my
life, whenever I am troubled with the night-mare. At the Bugle,
a very good house I say again, with a cordial gush of the heart,
for it was there I found what I had not seen for weeks before,
a good cup of tea, good cream, good bread, and good butter,
luxuries, downright luxuries to the traveller who has been a
week or two at Brighton, a day or two at Portsmouth, or a
single hour in the trap at Sand-Rock; a very good house,

[figure description] Page 020.[end figure description]

believe me, (mind—I speak here of the Bugle) though even
there, if you go to bed in the hope of being called at a future
day, you may never be thought of again, or be told as they
told me, when you have got up an age too late (As if you
were one of those who go to bed when they have nothing
else to do, and get up—occasionally), that you had been
called half a day before, and that either you answered in your
sleep, or that somebody else answered for you—somebody
else who occupied one of the four-and-forty next-rooms,
every door of which opened either into yours or so as to darken
yours, and who had been so very obliging as to wake in
your place, and get up in your stead; a story which you are
obliged to be satisfied with, for a sure way of making the
affair forty times more disagreeable than ever a joke was yet,
would be to regard it as no joke: a very good house, after
all though, where I contrived to get a boy—for a guide, a
very decent horse, and a very tolerable gig.

Before two o'clock on that every day, the morning of which
operated on me as if I were breathing sunshine—the vitality of
the sky—I found myself stretched out with all my length upon
the little narrow unsteady seat, which is fixed near the verge of
the precipice at Shanklin-Chine, the flat wide sea before me,
and the waves breaking with a steady roar underneath my very
feet; a troop of young happy creatures below me,—far, far below
me, running about on the pebbly beach with their clothes up
to their knees, dipping their little dainty feet one after another
into the salt sea, and shaking them very much as a cat
would hers, or coquetting with a surge as it breaks afar off
and floats over their path till they are overtaken by a huge
wave or entrapped while pursuing it; when they stop
and cry out as if they were all overboard, drop their clothes
and scamper off with a backward step and a delightful show
of childish joy and yet more childish terror—wondering at

[figure description] Page 021.[end figure description]

their own courage and rejoicing at their narrow escape; a
group here digging after shells for a trophy, or sea-weed for a
weathergage, or sifting the wet heavy sand through their
fingers, or wading about half-leg deep among the smooth pebbles
and white glossy gravel thrown up in huge furrows and
heaps all along the shore—feats to be told of when they have
got home: here a grave idler with a basket and a hammer,
a book and a magnifying-glass, abroad after flowers and butterflies
or bits of variegated flint; and there another group,
their cheeks flushed with joy and their eyes lighted with girlish
hope, ascending and descending by the hour—like the
shapes that were seen by the patriarch—between the top of
the cliff and the narrow beach below, and by a path as like a
ladder as a path could well be: here a cottage or two half
buried among the trees, and there a fisherman's hut which
appears either to have slipped down, hut hedges earth and
all, from the very top of the cliff, or to have been carried
where it is by a very high tide.

I grew sleepy. The sky and the waters, the blue deep
and the noise of the blue deep, the warm smooth atmosphere,
so like the breath of one you love, and the fatigue of the day
made me so; and as I did not like the idea of rolling over
the cliff into the nest of a sea-bird, or plump through the
fisherman's hut into the lap of somebody below; and as I
knew very well that if I did sleep, I should either dream of
that provoking mouth, or those ugly feet, which whenever I
shut my eyes appeared to be coming toward me, I got up,
shook myself, threw away my guide-book with a very audible
pshaw, and set off down the path, leap after leap, with a
feeling here—here—that I would not forego, if I might have
it again, for all the sober joy of a week wisely occupied—it
was the very outgushing of childhood.

[figure description] Page 022.[end figure description]

Having satisfied myself with a peep or two from below that
I had acted with singular propriety in descending the way I
did, I dipped my foot into the sea, like the other children—
as if the sea were a new thing to a fellow who had grown up
so near it as to be nearly amphibious—and came away weary
and vexed with my own thoughts; for, go whither I would
and do what I would, the disagreeable idea would keep returning
to me, that if I should ever be so happy as to meet
with her whose imperial shadow had haunted me so long,
year after year, by night and by day, and whether I was
awake or asleep, it was quite possible—I could not bear to say
probable—that she might have as bad a mouth, if not altogether
so bad a foot, as the shape that I saw coming up out of the
agitated sea, as I stood leaning over the rail of the pier, just
ready to drop into it.

1 It is told of Cleopatra and believed, that strangers were so transported
by her magnificent carriage, that many sold themselves to death for an
opportunity of being with her a little time.

1 Ryde, or Ride, on the Isle-of-Wight, opposite Portsmouth.

1 A somewhat celebrated hotel at Brighton, where I put up (with more
than ever mortal did before) on my way to Portsmouth.

2 A trap so called on the Isle-of-Wight.

p296-030 CHAPTER III.

TOUR OF THE ISLE... HOME... LABOR DISTINGUISHED FROM
EXERCISE... GRAVE-YARD.

[figure description] Page 023.[end figure description]

So, leaving those who had no such dread of the sea, as I
now began to have, nor any such dread of sleep as I thought
I soon should have, to pursue their search after smooth white
pebbles and other like wonders of the deep, I reascended the
cliff, called the boy away from his beer, tumbled into the gig
as if it were a wherry, and left him to steer whithersoever he
would, until he drew up and asked me if I had not better
leave him where he was, and walk round by a little church
and a cottage or two, that I saw huddled up together among
the trees a great way below the wood. It was quite impossible
to stay in the gig after one look at the entrance to the
cool shadowy hollow where these cottages were concealed—
a green cave, a narrow path-way, a thatched-roof, and large
trees were before me; but they were not long before me, I
promise you. Ere the boy could make me understand
where I was to meet him, I had escaped through the cloudy
path-way and arrived at a large barn—the very counterpart
of the barns that we have in America, where we
never think of leaving either hay or wheat exposed to the
open air. Attracted by the familiar noise of the flail, I drew
near and saw a sight worth going a voyage for, one that
I never shall forget, I am persuaded—never—the longest
day I have to live. I stopped—I stood still—every thing
about me, every thing I heard, every thing I saw reminded
me of America, and of the habits there while they were happy,
and before they had begun to tread out their grain with
the feet of young horses, driven about in a circle. Two

[figure description] Page 024.[end figure description]

young men were at work, in a stillness like that of the Sabbath-day,
and in a strong current of air, with a pile of wheat
on every side of them as high as they could reach, and cartloads
of straw at the door. The barn where they worked
was all open to the sky.—I could see through and through
it, and there was nothing to impede my view but a mass of
bright green foliage that overhung the further door-way with
a sort of transparent shadow—I never did see any thing so
beautiful. I could have sworn that the very sky itself was
covered with grape-leaves.

I inquired my way to Bow-Church, and they directed me
without looking up. I was to keep the path and go through
a wicket, when I would see the church `right afore me';
if I stepped quick, I might overtake a lady and a gentleman
who had preceded me but a very few minutes. Now, though
I am not of a very hard or unsocial temper I flatter myself,
nor much given to solitary indulgences, I declare to you
reader, that after I had gone a little way, I would rather have
met the—ahem—or any thing else alive or dead, a ghost or
a bailiff, than such a thing as a gentleman or a lady in my
path. A man or a woman, or any other natural thing I
could put up with in a place like that which I saw before me,
though I would rather be alone I confess—altogether alone,
if I could not have with me some one of the six or eight
brave girls that I might happen to be over head and ears in love
with at the time—girls of the sky, creatures of the blue
atmosphere, the blue sea, or the green wood, superb spiritualities
I mean reader—of course. A man or a woman I
could bear—but God preserve me from those who prattle
when a shadow is all about their feet, when they live and
breathe and move in a shadow, and the great green trees
are above their way and about their way, go whithersoever
they will; creatures who dare not breathe as we breathe,

[figure description] Page 025.[end figure description]

who dare not step on the wet grass, nor move without being
tied up and laced up, from the very crown of the head to the
sole of the foot, and who look as if, in spite of all their outcry
and artificial rapture, nothing on earth would provoke them
to a hearty romp.—I speak of the male creatures too,
the tidy little things who run about in the woods a-tiptoe,
and who if they ever happen to be caught in such a grave-yard
as I saw before me, a grave-yard all open to the sea
and sky; or on the top of a great hill (such as Leith-Hill1)
with an empire lying under their feet like a map; or at any
other place where a man would be sure to hold his breath,—
are pretty sure to be occupied in picking their teeth, or in
wiping their new hats or their new boots (both of which it
would be torture to wear) with a white pocket-handkerchief.
Gentle-men forsooth! As if to be without manhood were to
be gentle; as if to be gentle were to be weaker and more
helpless than a great girl; and as if it were worthier of a
man to have a little white hand, or smooth soft hair, than it
would be to have a little white face, or no beard.

I know very well that if you hope to enjoy any thing here,
(in this world I mean,) a walk in the woods, or over the
hills, or along the shore, by night or by day, you must have
a woman with you—for a man, if he is a man, will be very
sure to disturb you with argument or philosophy or something
worse; a woman too that you are in love with, and just
enough in love with, to enable you to see and feel the
beauty and the power of solitude. If there be too much
love between you, you may overlook the landscape and
forget every thing but each other; if too little—you have
no relish for what you see, you might as well be with
a man. With a man!—ay, with a dog—you had much

[figure description] Page 026.[end figure description]

better be a dog, yourself and be with a dog; for you are a
slave without even the reward of a slave, or the privilege of
one.

But while it is very true that if you are to enjoy a walk any
where, you must have a woman with you, and such a woman
as I say, with wit enough to know when to talk and when to
hold her tongue—a beloved wife who is able to understand
you and make herself understood without speech; and while
it is true, that in no other way can you enjoy a walk or a
stroll as they are to be enjoyed by the true epicure, it is also
true that if you wish to be tired before your blood is warm,
weary before you know why, fatigued before you are exhilarated;
or if you are to walk for your sins, and have done
something or thought something, for which a trip to the pole
with peas in your shoes were too mild a punishment, you
have only to take a woman with you—a lady—for whom
you don't care a fig.

Labor is not exercise. Fatigue is not exhilaration.
Therefore I say to those who walk much—Do not walk alone,
for if you do, it is fifty to one that your mind is harder at
work, than it would be in your study; you might as well
rock in a chair till you dropped out of it, or run up stairs
and down till you were ready to cry with fatigue. But if
you do walk alone, beware how you walk the self-same road
as a great many do, day after day year after year. You
had much better be at home; you would have as good air,
nay better, nine tenths of the time, and you would not be
half so likely to overdo your mind—for the mind and the
body will work together. And if you walk where there is
nothing new to make you loiter on the way, you soon get
walking faster than you should; for the mind will hurry
on if there be no check nor stay to the current of thought,
and the body will keep step with it, like a soldier treading to

[figure description] Page 027.[end figure description]

music. But your step may be quick, whatever be the state
of your mind. If it be cheerful and your thoughts flow like
a river, you are anxious to get home, where you may turn
that river to account; if it be perplexed and your thoughts
flow like the drops that are wrung out of the body by hard
labor, you are only the more anxious to be at home; for it is
there, if any where, that you hope to meet with and overcome
your adversary. I never knew a solitary walker who did not
begin with walking a much slower pace than he left off with;
nor one who was not sure to outwalk other people whenever
he got on a road which he was familiar with; nor one
who did not walk as if he had a job waiting for him at home,
or as if the walk itself were a job, which he would be glad to
have ended. Of what avail are such walks? They are
downright labor; they beget no exhilaration; they are sure
to be followed with a sense of fatigue—a sign of itself that
you have not been relieved by your walk, either in body or
mind. They are all this even if they are made in fair weather;
but how much worse are they, when made in foul
damp weather? I have an idea that I could tell by the
very step of a man, by the swing of his arms, by the stoop of
his neck, by the lounge of his whole body, or by his half-military
air, not only whether he was in the habit of walking
much alone, but whether he was in the habit of walking much
over the same road.

If you wish to profit by a walk therefore, do not walk alone.
But whether you walk alone or not, never walk the same road
till you are tired of it, or so familiar with it as to remember
nothing of your walk after you have got home, save that you
have been to a particular house, or a particular tree; in
which case it would be well for you never to go that road
again till you had forgotten every step of the way. Otherwise,
your walk would be of no use to you, either in body or

[figure description] Page 028.[end figure description]

mind; you might as well trot round a cage of six feet by
four. Above all, do not walk with a woman, if she be not of
those, who while they are very dear to you, as I have hinted
already, are not so very dear as to shorten your walk or spoil
it. Nevertheless, if there be no other way, if you must walk
or die, you may take the air with a female you don't care a fig
for; you may even go out with a dog, or a stick, or a child,
if it be to save your life; but let nothing induce you, nothing,
to walk with a gentleman or a lady, in a place that you ever
hope to see again with pleasure.

There! will any body tell me now that my story has no
moral to it? Or will any body say that I have not packed up
as much good new and useful truth in it, as the age will
bear?

So, such being my notions of the matter, I need say no
more to convince you that instead of trying to overtake the
lady and gentleman who had `stepped' a little before me,
I rather chose to keep out of their way. I did so for a good
while, when at last, having got near enough to peep into the
little grave-yard—it was like that of one family, the graves
were so few and so near to each other, and the whole were
so near the sea, that a stranger would have thought a brave
ship had been wrecked there with all her crew, and the church
had been built over them—near enough to peep into the grave-yard,
to reconnoitre all the paths about, and to satisfy myself
that I had nothing to fear from the lady, I sprang over the barrier,
with a step not well suited, I confess, to the green dwelling
of the dead, the antechamber of the sky; and after looking into
the little portico of the church—it was all written over
with names that nobody knew, and with dates that nobody
cared for, scored on the white-washed wall or cut into the
wood,—I had begun to puzzle out a few of the epitaphs that
were mouldering away, virtue by virtue, from the wooden

[figure description] Page 029.[end figure description]

tombstones about me, and was getting ahead bravely, when I
lighted upon one—a very droll affair, which I knew that I had
seen somewhere else, but where I could not remember for a
long while. It ran thus—

Why, Voltaire could not have expressed himself with more
caution. To live with Christ and be at rest—I hope the
change is for the best! Well, well, it was a very odd
epitaph—but where had I seen it before? After a few minutes
I recollected where—it was in a church-yard at Dorking
Surrey. At Dorking—Surrey—in a moment—in the
twinkling of an eye, the whole course of my thought was
changed—I forgot where I was—I saw nothing more of the
church nor the church-yard—I thought only of Box-Hill, of
Leith Hill, of the heights, and of the Holm-wood, of the barren
heath, so like the lands of America that have been exhausted
by tobacco, and of the wild shrubbery; of all I had seen, of
all I had thought for an age, in that glorious and beautiful
part of our earth, where if the wind shifted, or the sky changed,
while we were out in the high places among the purple
heather, every part of the landscape would come and go with
a perpetual variety, wearing every minute a new shape, and
looking every day as if we had never seen it before. What
business had I in a grave-yard, while my heart was heaving
with such recollections? Very little, I fear—and so I came
away, and pursued my walk for a good while without looking
up or turning aside in the narrow pathway which I had stumbled
upon—so still was it, and so like a path made by the
feet of children or lovers—or sheep. I know not how long
I might have walked here, if I had not been roused by the
approach of a dog—the finest dog I ever saw. I called him
to me, and was trying to get acquainted with his cur-ship

[figure description] Page 030.[end figure description]

(I borrow that idea from the philosopher of Q. S. P.), when
I heard a whistle in the sky, and immediately after that, a
voice, the tone of which I shall never forget. I looked up
and saw a man far above me on a huge pile of rock that appeared
to have been hewed for a pedestal, ages ago, with
a flag-staff rooted in the middle of it. I started—for the
shape of the man was that of him I had encountered three
years before in the solitudes of Westminster-Abbey. But
what of that? Who cares for a shape? In the course of
that period, had I not seen fifty people with a shape like his,
and half a score that were otherwise like him? And if it
should prove to be the same individual that I saw there, of
what use would that be to me? I did not care to see him:
It was the woman I was after (in a lawful way), not the man.
Very true—but—but—if I were to fall in the way of the man,
would not that be one step toward falling in the way of the
woman, or at least of learning who and what she was, and
whether married or single? Ah—but if she were married—
if she should turn out to be that man's wife? or any other
man's wife, and very beautiful or very wise, what would
become of me? It would be unlawful, you know—very unlawful
to care a fig for another man's wife; and so—and
so—and so, while I was determining to avoid the mischief
and keep clear of the temptation for the rest of my life, I
found myself, I never knew how, at the foot of the rock, on
the top of which I had seen the stranger not five minutes before.

1 Near Dorking Surrey, celebrated for its broad, variegated, and very
English prospect.

p296-038 CHAPTER IV.

THE CELEBRATED WALL... THE LAND-SLIP... SCENERY...
COMFORTS OF DINING... SAND-ROCK HOTEL.

[figure description] Page 031.[end figure description]

I hurried up—he was gone. But whither—and why—
and how? Did he know me? Was he trying to avoid me, as
I avoided other people?—Did he mistake me for a gentleman?
I hope not; I had as lief be mistaken for a lady,—
or a lap-dog.

It would be altogether vain for me to try to describe what
I saw from the top of the rock; for my thoughts were away,
far, far away, and my heart was heavy, and I felt some how
or other as if I myself were away among the solitudes of
North-America, by the river-side or the water-fall, in the
darkness and beauty of another world, `with one fair spirit
for my minister.'

The view was delightful, and rich, and various, and like
nothing I had ever seen before. I remember thus much, and
I remember too that whatever there was to see, I saw, and
that before the day was well over, I (But for my life I cannot
say now whether it was while I stood on that rock or after I
had peeped over and crawled away) among a multitude of
things, the memory of which had escaped me before my head
was on the pillow that very night, I saw—a huge high wall1

[figure description] Page 032.[end figure description]

—so huge as to appear like a part of the foundations of our
earth, and so high that I mistook a white cloud sailing over
the top, for smoke. It was like the vapor that follows the
discharge of cannon that are too far off to be heard; a wall
stretching over leagues and leagues of territory; cottages underneath
my very feet (I could have jumped through the
roofs) grouped here and there among the trees and the rocks,
and the gushing water and the wild shrubbery, as if they
were copied from old pictures; on every side of me the bulwarks
of an empire, great square blocks which appeared as if
they had been wrought by the hands, or piled up where they
lay by the power of giants; here a cottage or two garnered
up in the holes of the rocks, and there half a dozen more literally
folded among the ruins of what appeared like the overthrown
barrier of a huge citadel—a barrier overthrown by
flood, or by earthquake, or by fire from above—not by the
wrath of mortal man; here a heap of the greenest foliage I
ever saw, overhanging a roof, the loveliest I ever saw (not
seven feet high), and a little bit of smooth rich turf, yet
greener than the foliage of the young trees, and as lively as
the plumage of a parrot—`Green to the very door'—and
hedged about with flowering shrubs and great rocks, much
higher than the roof, and scattered clumps of blackberry—
bushes, with never a bit of a pathway to be seen, so that you

[figure description] Page 033.[end figure description]

could not conceive how the people got there alive, nor how
they got the children there that you saw laughing and rolling
about, or hiding in the shadow of the rocks, or creeping half
sideways over the smooth turf.

All this I did see, and I saw it either while I was on the
top of that rock, holding by the flag-staff, afraid to move lest
the rock should tip over among the houses, and afraid to let
go, lest I should be blown away; or I saw it, after I had escaped;
but furthermore I cannot say, for while I was looking
about me and wondering at the beauty of the landscape, and
wishing I had thought of looking at the dog's collar when he
was with me, by which I might have been able to guess out
the name of his master, my attention was caught by a well
drawn figure on the flag-staff—a figure that—that—upon my
word I begin to be half afraid of telling the truth—you will
think me mad I am sure, and I confess that I began to feel
rather shy on that score myself when I thought over all the
occurrences of the day. First I had met with a female
shape which I mistook for that of the woman I had met in
the Abbey three years before. Hardly had I got over that
shock—the shock that followed a near view of her face and
her feet—when I fell in the way of another shape, so like that
of the male apparition who walked by her side in the Abbey,
as to throw me into a grievous flutter, and provoke me to
pursue it up a huge pile of rock—I hardly know how; in the
hope of—I hardly know what; for I should have looked
rather sheepish I fear, if when I arrived at the top of the
pile I had found the stranger there, alive and occupied in
sketching the admirable figure that I saw before me. But
the truth must be told, whatever you may think of such folly.
I could not be mistaken now—the figure that I saw on the
flag-staff was the figure of the female I had met in Westminster
Abbey. A mere sketch, a mere outline, though it

[figure description] Page 034.[end figure description]

was, still the air, the carriage, the superb height, every thing
was like her and like nobody else. But for whom was it made,
wherefore, and how? And by whom? Was he a lover?
I looked at the sketch again; I tried to transfer it to my
pocket-book—I did not succeed. He was not only her lover
then—it was not enough to have her image in his heart as I
had, but he must have been a capital draughtsman—I caught
my breath—and perhaps—I caught my breath again—perhaps,
the proud woman herself was at his elbow leaning over
him while he was at work, just as he had represented her in
the sketch. I now saw another figure partially effaced, and
after looking awhile, aided perhaps by a little imagination, I
succeeded in persuading myself that I knew just how the
whole originated. The drawing was the work of two hands—
of that I was perfectly sure. One part was the work of a
pupil, the other part the work of a master. But which was
the master? and which the pupil? One figure appeared to
be sitting with a large book upon his knee, peradventure a
Sketch-Book; the other, a female, was standing up and overlooking
the first while he appeared to be reading or drawing.
The sitting figure, though nearly obliterated, so that I could
not so well judge of the execution, was clearly the work of a
hand much inferior to that which drew the upright figure.
Was it not very probable therefore that one of the two persons
who had clambered up the precipice for a view, was a
teacher of drawing, the other his pupil? What could be
more so? Was it not very probable moreover, that while he
was occupied with the large book upon his knee, sketching a
part of the landscape, she had been at work on the flag-staff
trying to sketch her master? And that he, having caught her
in the fact, had the impudence to portray her in the attitude
that vexed me, (the wretch,) leaning over his shoulder, with
one elbow resting upon it as if she were a newly-made wife?

[figure description] Page 035.[end figure description]

And that she, indignant at such audacity, had thereupon
rubbed out the figure below? And that, in a word, whatever
else they were, they were not on such familiar terms
with each other as to admit of their being coupled in this way.
For about five minutes, nothing could have been more delightful
nor more satisfactory than the conclusion to which I
had now arrived. But before the next five minutes were
over, I had begun to fear that possibly—possibly—by some
possibility—I might be mistaken. If she rubbed out his figure
in wrath, why the devil had she not rubbed out her own?
If he was able to prevent her from destroying the beautiful
sketch of herself, why could he not prevent her from destroying
the sketch of another? For a while I could not escape—she
had suffered her portrait to remain—she had therefore not rubbed
out his with a feeling of displeasure, but perhaps from a
feeling of dissatisfaction; it was not enough like him perhaps,
or perhaps not worthy of his pupil, or perhaps—I began to
feel as if I should certainly cut his throat if I ever came in
his way. But softly—was there not a hope still? a chance
of a hope—the hope of a chance—the hope of a hope?
There was—there was—I perceived the truth now—it was
clear as noon-day—I only wondered I had not seen it before.
She was a very good girl, and she had been up there and
made a sketch before breakfast, and not being half satisfied
with it, she had rubbed her pretty fingers over it, and effaced
every line of the whole as she thought, and come away.
But after breakfast, another had gone up, the fellow that I saw,
and he had partially restored her sketch and put in the figure
that I saw. This idea did very well too for about an hour;
at the end of which time I had begun to ask myself whether
it was not very possible—just within the limits of possibility—
that the woman I saw on the steps of the pier might after
all be a relation or a sister of the shape that I saw in the

[figure description] Page 036.[end figure description]

Abbey; and if so, whether it was not very possible that I had
come in the way of the family at last without knowing it—popped
into their very hiding-place by the merest accident in the
world. But—if it should prove, as it possibly might, after all—
if it should prove that the woman of the Abbey was like the
woman of the sea; or if it should prove that the woman of
the Abbey and the woman of the sea were after all one and
the same person, what on earth was to become of me?
Should I hang myself, or jump overboard? hang up in
that very niche where I first began to make a fool of myself;
or go back to the pier at Ryde where I had first begun
to behave like a booby, and jump into the sea?

Before I could make up my mind which course to pursue, I
had arrived at the Sand-Rock Hotel, where I suffered so much
from a sort of trouble which few have the courage to speak of,
that I must—I will give a history of what occurred to me
there. I should remark before I begin however, that on my
way to this Hotel, I saw on every side of my path wonders
which appear to me now, like what I have seen somewhere in
my sleep; and beauty and verdure that I never can lose the
memory of, though it is out of my power to say in what part
of my road they broke upon me. There was the great wall
as before—the outworks of another Babylon; there was the
great sea too, and look where I would, there was a bit of lovely
pure landscape, with a cottage nestling under the rocks,
and a few sheep, and a few trees, and mayhap a little stream
of water to encourage me on; but still every thing that I saw is
like a dream to me now. My thoughts were so occupied
with the earlier occurrences of the day, that I rode through
a part of the most beautiful country in the world, as if the
ride were to continue for ever. Of course I had no safe
recollection of what I saw before I slept; and after I had
slept, so carried away was I, by the hope of what was to

[figure description] Page 037.[end figure description]

occur during the day, and so teased by the petty vexations
about me, that I could hardly remember how I had come;
and before that day was over, such was the variety and such
the strangeness of the incidents that occurred in the course
of a single hour, that I could not have said whether much that I
have related here was not a dream. Others I dare s ay have
been so perplexed when they were at sea, or travelling, as
not to know the day of the week, or the day of the month;
but as for me, I could not have told what month it was without
a deal of consideration, nor whether I had been one, two,
or three days on the road. I do not say that I had actually
lost the run of the year at the time I speak of; but I do say,
that if I had been fool enough to stay twenty-four hours longer
at the Sand-Rock Hotel, I should have lost my senses.
But let me give the reader a notion of what may be endured
by a man half crazy with love, when he has an idea that he
is under the same roof with the woman he loves, and separated
from her, as people are separated from death at sea,
by a half-inch board (more or less.) It may be well to begin
at the very beginning.

The approach to the house delighted me. The roof was
thatched, there was a green piazza running the whole
length of the house, and there was a very pretty patch
of green turf spreading out before the piazza far enough to
allow a sort of a promenade. As I drove up to the door, I
saw several faces at the window—but I could not see of what
shape or form they were, much as I desired it; for there was
a bit of thin white drapery between the faces and me. At
the door too, several persons appeared, and others were
walking about on the little patch of green; but nobody in the
shape of a landlord or waiter, chamber-maid or hostler. I
went up to the door, and was going in to look for the coffee-room,
or the traveller's room, or a room where I could see

[figure description] Page 038.[end figure description]

somebody belonging to the house, when I perceived that I
should get into the kitchen if I stirred either way, or into the
room at the window of which the faces appeared. A knocker
was on the door—I believe—but I dare not be certain, for
I have quite forgotten much that I saw there, and I hope to
forget the rest before I die. But whether a knocker was on
the door or not, I knocked; and after awhile—faith, it was a
good while too, so long that I began to fear the guide had
brought me to a private house, and that the people about me
were the retired nobility of our age—a very good sort of a man
appeared, with a face that I took the liberty to be pleased
with. I asked for a room. He hesitated. For the coffee-room,—
there was no coffee-room. For the traveller's-room,—
there was no such room to be had; he was very sorry.
Could I have a private room? or a place to eat my dinner?—
I was hungry as a tiger. He did not know, but would
inquire. He left me standing at the door, and after a few
minutes came back, and desiring me to follow him, took me
round the house on the outside, and opening a door which
led me up a narrow stair-case, entrapped me into a room so
meagre, so desolate, and so like the rooms we see in the new
public-houses of my country when they stand out of the general
thoroughfare, that I felt rather inclined to be merry by
occupying all the furniture I saw. Pray, Sir, said I, where
am I to sleep? He did not know as he knew, but he would
inquire. Very well—what can you give me for dinner?
What should you like, Sir? Any thing, whatever you can
get me soonest—a mutton-chop or a rump-steak, or whatever
you please; I should like a bit of cold chicken, or beef, or—
in short, any thing eatable. You can have a chop, Sir. Have
you nothing else? No, Sir. But you have a tart, I suppose,
or a pie? Neither Sir; but if you would like some fritters, he
added with a bow. Fritters! the very thing—mutton-chop

[figure description] Page 039.[end figure description]

and fritters! The very idea was enough to make a starved man
cheerful. But when are they to be ready? In half an hour.
I pulled out my watch—it is now six; I am now going out
for a walk, and at half past six I shall be ready, if you are.

Having settled this matter, I walked off to see what I could
see in the neighbourhood; rejoicing all the way that I had
been so lucky as to find a sitting-room and a bed-room, with
such a delightful walk between the two as I foresaw that I
was likely to have. The great wall was before me, hardly
a gun-shot off, and there was just light enough in the sky
to see my way up.

So up I went by a perpendicular path-way, which had once
been made use of, but having been found too dangerous, it
had been stopped with a sort of loose wall, which it was not a
very safe nor easy thing for a man to get over. I got over it
nevertheless, and before five minutes were over I stood on
the top of the precipice, looking down upon the houses below
me, and feeling as if with one effort of my foot, if I were
a large man, I could bury them where they stood in earth
and rubbish for ever. But if the getting up was unsafe, the
getting down was a great deal more so; for I soon discovered
that I had not courage enough to come down by the
way that I had gone up by—so different is the measure we
take of heights when we are looking up, from what we do
when looking down. It was now getting dark, and my dinner
was ready, and I saw people at the windows of the tavern
looking up at me as if they had gathered together in a hurry;
and among others, a female, who stood as if expecting me to
step over the precipice. I did not much like my situation—
I saw that I had no time to lose—and I persuaded myself
once more that I could see a resemblance in her figure to
that of the woman I was in search of. Not another moment
would I have staid where I was, for ten times more than

[figure description] Page 040.[end figure description]

I was likely to get by my voyage of discovery; and so I gave
it up, and seeing a deep fissure in the rocks running from the
very top to the bottom, with irregular projections all the way,
which I thought I could manage to hold on by, long enough at
any rate to secure my passage from one to another, I undertook
a descent in that manner; and after groping my way for
a minute or two, and slipping my hold once where if I had
not instantly caught again, I should have broken my neck to
a dead certainty, I arrived safely at the bottom; proceeded
directly to the house—full of the strange hope—the strange
fear, I might as well say, that I had now come to the place
where I was pre-ordained to meet her that I was in search of,
and see the mystery cleared up.

But I was not able to find my room. The house which I
left on one side of me when I went up the hill, I found on the
other, when I had got back. I went to the door and knocked;
and after waiting the usual time, the waiter appeared
and acted as guide. I was lucky enough to find the room;
but where was the dinner? It was long past the hour agreed
upon; and yet look which way I would, no sign of dinner
was to be seen. The very cloth was not laid—nor were
the candles lighted. I had just begun to feel vexed, when
the waiter appeared—saying that two ladies had come who
were obliged to drink tea in their bed-room, there being no
spare room in the whole house. They are welcome to this
room said I, the moment I have eaten my dinner, if that will
do? No answer. They may have it now indeed, if you will
give me a place where I can sit long enough to swallow a
chop. No answer. You will inquire, if you please, and I beg
you to say that I do not offer them a share of the room, but
the whole of it. Still no answer. He leaves me—and I
have then leisure to think of what is to be done. If the ladies
were kind enough to accept my offer, especially if it should

[figure description] Page 041.[end figure description]

happen to rain, what was I to do—with no books—not so much
as a newspaper to keep me alive? I should have to go to bed.
Before I have quite made up my mind to hang myself, if it
should rain, the waiter brings me a heap of mutton steaks—
in capital order—and leaves me to ring for whatever else I
may think proper to need. After a while I ring. Nobody
comes. I wait a few minutes and ring again. Still nobody
comes. I get uneasy; I begin to ask myself whether I am
quite safe in such a desolate room. At last however, I get
some wretched wine, a spoon-full of sugar, and a few fritters;
but before I can speak, the waiter is gone—gone too, without
saying whether he has made the offer to the ladies or
not, and whether I am to go to bed, or turn out and walk till
bed-time, without having a right to come back to the room I
occupy, whatever may happen. It is very vexatious. Ring—
ring—ring. After a while somebody appears at the door, and
I beg to know what the ladies have concluded upon, that I
may know what to do with myself till bed-time. Away goes
the messenger, and I wait and ring, wait and ring, wait and
ring, for another half hour; at the end of which time, I am
told by a red-haired girl who peeps into the door just long
enough to deliver the message, and let me hear the voices of
people below as happy as heart could wish, that the ladies
have concluded to take their tea in their bed-room—without
so much as a civil word to me for the offer I made them.
Very well—that affair being ended, I have nothing more to
say, whatever I may think about such ladies; and off I go for
a walk, I care not whither, noting the land-marks at every
step as I proceed, and leaving a candle burning upon the table,
that I may know which way to steer when I get back. I pursue
the path for a whole hour, over a sort of broken-up highway—
on one side of me the everlasting wall with stars watching
and burning along its verge—on the other heaps of mighty rocks,

[figure description] Page 042.[end figure description]

piled up as if they were gathered by giants for battle, and the afar
off great sea, black as midnight and awful as the grave. But—
with so much to chill me—for the night is dark, the weather
cool, and the prospect dreary as death—my heart is bounding
with hope, and go whither I will, every step of my foot
is a spring. But why—why—who is there to explain this
deep mystery? I am no longer a child; I know that I am
above being disturbed as the youthful are, by dreams and
presages. I have gone by that period, when the heart leaps
for joy at the approach of a new face; that period when if we
happen to be where we never have been before, we are sure
to see more sights and meet with more adventures, laughable
or serious, in a single day, than we should see or
meet with in a twelvemonth if we were a few years older.
And yet, although I have passed that age—I pray you, do
not jeer me—I feel as if something is about to happen,
something which is to have a material influence on my
fate here and perhaps hereafter. I cannot shake off the
persuasion—I walk hurriedly on—I breathe hard as I
go, and my temples throb at every step; and yet I am
trying to persuade myself that I do not care a fig for
the past or the future (in this life), nor a fig for the female
shape that I saw at the window holding herself apart from
the rest, with an attitude expressive I am sure of deep
anxiety—no, not a fig, though it should prove to be the original
of the sketch that I saw on the flag-staff, or the blessed
creature who swept by me as I stood in the darkness of a
gone-by age, among the marble creatures of WestminsterAbbey.

After a good hour's walk, I return flushed with exercise in
spite of the cool night-air, and feverish with expectation. I go
up to the door and lift the knocker—and am just going to
let it fall, when I recollect myself and hurry away, passing the

[figure description] Page 043.[end figure description]

window of a lighted room, within which I can see the shadow
of two persons—I would give the world to know who they
are—but I have not courage enough to ask: I tremble at the
very idea of discovering that she whom I saw, is not so beautiful
as I have thought her for three long years; or that she
is a married woman, married perhaps to the very man that
I saw her with; or that she is unworthy of the strange regard
that I feel for her and shall feel for her to my dying day, if she
be not more unworthy than I dare to suppose. I get up to
my room as well as I can—I throw myself into a chair—I lean
my head upon my hands—I reproach myself a good half hour
for my inconceivable folly, and finish by jumping up and
ringing the bell, with a fixed determination to find out who
the people are that I have seen below. I ring, and ring, and
ring, at intervals, for about a quarter of an hour, when a good
sort of a woman shows her head at the top of the stairs, in a
very interesting situation. My courage is gone, I dare not
speak a word—I dare not ask who the people are,—and I go
up to her, that I may save her all the trouble I can, praying
her to give me a newspaper—I care not how old it may be—
or a book, I care not how worthless it may be (I could read
one of my own, I verily believe now). Stop—we must begin
with a new chapter.

1 The geological phenomena of the Isle-of-Wight are as much celebrated
as the scenery and fertility. Mr. Webster, in the second volume of the
Transactions of the London Geological Society, says, `The chalk covered
by the London clay, passes under the channel, called the Solent, and rises
in the middle of the island, forming a range of hills, which extends from
Culver-Cliffs on the East to the Needles on the West. Here we meet with
the only remarkable derangement of the beds of chalk, and the superior
strata, which has been noticed in England. The strata of this range of hills,
says Bakewell (in his Introduction to Geology) are thrown into a position
absolutely vertical, evincing the action of some mighty disturbing force,
which can be so often observed to have acted on the lower strata in various
parts of the world, and also on the upper strata in the vicinity of the Alps.'

`The whole thickness of the beds in the Isle-of-Wight, which are nearly
vertical, according to Mr. Webster's measurement, is not less than 3000
feet, including 1481 feet of strata above the chalk, about 987 feet of chalk,
and 500 or 600 feet of lower strata. Farther south the strata under the chalk
are seen again in their original horizontal position, and on the northern
side there are hills composed of horizontal strata, evidently of a formation
posterior to the time when the chalk strata were overturned.'

p296-051 CHAPTER V.

ENGLISH INN FOR TOURISTS... ENGLISH BEDS... WAITERS...
ENGLISH BREAKFAST... HOUSEHOLD PHILOSOPHY... ALLUM
BAY... THE NEEDLES... THE LIGHT-HOUSE...

[figure description] Page 044.[end figure description]

The landlady (for it was she) soon re-appeared, and I was
careful to meet her again at the top of the stairs, and save
her as much trouble as I could, in her peculiar situation, which
was of a nature to render a woman very sacred in the eyes
of a good man. She had brought a book to amuse me—the
second I had met with in the whole course of the day. The
first I had got by heart—it was a guide-book for the Isle-of-Wight
in duodecimo; and this turned out to be a guide-book
to the Isle-of-Wight in quarto. I could not enjoy such variety—
it reminded me of the fare I had been used to in the
heart of New-England—fish-and-potatoes one day, and potatoes-and-fish
another; and after waiting a while in hope that
some of the voices that I heard wrangling below might come
within reach of mine, I took a chair and sat down by the bell-rope,
knowing by experience what sort of a job I had before
me, and forthwith began to pull a sort of triple-bob-major,
with rests long enough to afford me a nap at the end of
each bar: with much difficulty, and after I had played out
all the tunes I knew, and was just going to begin again with
variations of Yankee Doodle by Matthews, intending to accompany
the air with the original words—


Five times five are twenty-five,
And five times six are thirty;
Five times seven are thirty-five,
And five times eight are forty, &c. &c.
I succeeded in getting a guide to my chamber, a

[figure description] Page 045.[end figure description]

corrotyhaired girl with a pretty good face, who after leading me out
into the cool night air, as if that were a part of her duty before
she put me to bed, conducted me through the kitchen,
which was crowded with servants all talking together; and
having apologized for leading me that way (the only way there
was to my bed-room), she passed me over to the ugliest creature
I ever saw in the shape of a chamber-maid, who starting
off the moment she saw me, with a heavy trot like a cart-horse,
begged me to follow. I did so, pursuing her at half speed
this way and that, up stairs and down, till she arrived at a
door in the garret where, letting fall a courtesy as if she had
trod upon something that hurt her foot, and pushing open the
door, she informed my worship that I was in my bed-room.
I started at the girl in amazement. A bedroom!—how
on earth could she manage to keep her countenance—
what in the name of all Cape-Elizabeth was I to do—
laugh or cry? There were two little beds in the room, six
feet by three—stuck just under the eves, like a pair of swallows'-nests.
Pray said I to the girl,—who appeared rather
anxious to get away, as if she knew by bitter experience what
was to be expected from the wrath of a lodger who had been
decoyed into that particular room—she stood as if she had
entrapped a wild beast, ready to jump over the railings if I
spoke or moved—Pray said I, am I to sleep here?

If you please, Sir.

If I please! why, my good girl, I cannot get my breath
here; the roof is too low, and as for that little window there,
why—hang the window! little as it is, it was never made to
open, I see; I can't move it a peg—neither up nor down, nor
sideways. What am I to do? occupy that little bed there,
not more than two or three feet wide, and stuck under the hot
smoking thatched roof, upon which the summer-sun has been
blazing all day. Am I to sleep there, I say?

[figure description] Page 046.[end figure description]

Yes, Sir—if you please—

Why—if I should happen to lift my head in the night, I
shall certainly knock my brains out—

If you please, continued she in the same tone, half frightened
to death, and letting fall another courtesy as ugly as herself.

You may go—my dear—said I, in that most persuasive way
so peculiar to our family; being satisfied that if she staid another
minute I should be strongly tempted to open the obnoxious
window, by pitching her through it head-foremost.

Hardly was she gone when it occurred to me to look at the
bed more narrowly. I went up to it—threw down the
coverlid—and gasped for breath—heavy cotton sheets,
that clung to whatever they touched! and a feather-bed,
precisely such as I would employ to suffocate a man, if there
were no hope for him in a case of hydrophobia! And this in
the middle of September, between a floor which was warm to
the tread, and a roof that was warm to the touch, with no
way to introduce a breath of air into the room though you
were dying for it. Such were my prospects.

I walked up to the bell-rope once more, threw off my coat,
and after ringing two or three times gently, to prepare the
folks in the kitchen, whose uproar continued long and long after
I was in bed, I drew up my chair and set to for an
their half-day's work. By and by, the steps of somebody
were heard, and a smothered laugh, and a couple of
persons, followed by a third, who I dare say was the chamber-maid,
passed by my door and took shelter in the room opposite,
which I hoped was like that in which I was doing
(or being done). I'll teach them to titter, said I to myself as
they tripped by the door.

When these people were disposed of—I would have given a
trifle to see who they were, but there was no chance for a
peep, the glass of my door being covered with a green stuff—

[figure description] Page 047.[end figure description]

when they were disposed of I say, the chamber-maid was
obliging enough to see what I wanted. She must have been
used to like behaviour in those who occupied my room, or she
must have thought by the noise, for I kept pulling away, that
her lodger was in a fit, with his hands tied to the bell-rope.

I cannot possibly go to bed in this way said I, the moment
I saw her face at the door. I cannot sleep in cotton-sheets
my good girl, at this season of the year.

She dropped another courtesy, without looking up or saying
a word in reply.

Have you no linen sheets? Why don't you speak? Nothing
but heavy cotton sheets with the fur on, for such weather as—
where the devil are you going? what is the matter with
you? why don't you answer me? Stop, I say!

Another awkward courtesy, and away she drove to inquire
if I might be indulged with a pair of linen sheets, leaving me
half undressed and sore with perplexity, to prepare for the
issue. After awhile she came back to say, that she's very
sawry, and Missis very sawry, she's no linen sheets haired.

Very well, if that be the case; but I should like to know
if I can have a pair of cotton sheets with the wool off—

Sir!

If they are not haired, so much the better.

Very well, Sir.

Stop—send for my boots, or take them with you now, and
let me be called—fire and fury, you don't hear a word I say.

Yes I do, Sir.

Well, what have I said?

Why Sir, you said you, you—you—you asked me where
the devil I was goin'?

Pshaw! send for my boots, or take them with you now,
and let me be called at seven to-morrow morning—at seven
precisely, d'ye hear.

[figure description] Page 048.[end figure description]

Another courtesy and a sort of whimper, which sounded to
me like a smothered giggle.

Have my boots ready for me outside the door when I get
up, so that I may not have to disturb the whole house for
them—do you hear?—and tell the boy to be ready with the
gig at seven, will you?—zounds, are you deaf?

Yes Sir—no Sir.

Yes Sir—no Sir; what am I to understand by that?

Yes Sir—

Yes Sir!

No Sir!

Pho pho, leave me.

I now prepared to go to bed, not knowing whether to laugh
or be angry, though I knew that if I did not sleep, I should
wish the Sand-Rock Hotel at the bottom of the Red-Sea;
and that if I did sleep, I should stand a pretty fair chance of
being smothered, or of knocking my brains out whenever I
lifted my head. But sleep was out of the question—I had
little to be afraid of on that score; the noise below would
have kept me awake, if I had been ever so sleepy, or
in ever so delightful a bed—to say nothing of the fever
I was in for having suffered myself to be so packed
away; nor of the bitter self-examination that I subjected
myself to, touching the inconceivable folly of my behaviour
toward—not a woman, but the shape of a woman, who
though I had never seen her face, nor heard her speech, had
haunted me night and day for three whole years; nor any
thing of the peculiar structure of the window and the bed,
one of which, though it would not suffer a breath of air to
get to me, kept rattling to the breeze all night long, while the
other shrieked so as to be heard all over the house, whenever
I stirred hand or foot, and was so narrow, that move
which way I would, I was sure to roll the clothes off.

[figure description] Page 049.[end figure description]

I lived through the night—how I escaped the catastrophe I
spoke of, He only knows who watches over the ship-boy on
the giddy mast, and the lodgers of the Sand-Rock Hotel.
But I know that I had a narrow escape and that I never can be
sufficiently thankful. I was very sleepy toward morning (after
the house had got still) and yet I could not sleep—I durst
not sleep—I was afraid,—for whenever I shut my eyes, a
tomb like a city was before me, and a beautiful apparition
that I knew, swept by me with a slow majestic tread that I
knew, and disappeared in the far shadow of the grave; or
she stood still before me—in the attire of a bride, and when
I strove to look at her, my heart was heavy with unspeakable
sorrow, for I knew that she was not of our earth, and yet
I loved her. No—no, I could not sleep—and yet, after I was
up and out in the fresh morning air, so happy was I, that I could
hardly speak for joy. I recollected having seen her shadow
pass by my chamber door, arm in arm with a shadow that I
knew to be her husband—pass by to the bridal-couch, even
as they did in the story told by Rousseau, and that I started up
with a feeling that no language can describe; it was like that
which I suppose the lover of Julia had, when as he lay
awake after he had parted from her, he heard her step and the
rustling of her dress—poor wretch—as she and her husband
passed by to their marriage-bed. But such thoughts are
evil. They may do mischief where I would only do good;
they may be a trouble to her, who if I could have my way,
should never know what trouble is. And therefore, casting
off the recollection of what I suffered in my sleep, for I must
have been asleep, though I had no other proof than the memory
of this cruel dream, I shall proceed with my story.

I should have got up early, as early as I could see, if I
had not been afraid of disturbing the house; but having had
some experience of what is called the breakfast-hour in

[figure description] Page 050.[end figure description]

hotels, I chose to lie and wait to be waked. But I could
not wait for ever, and so after looking at my watch, and finding
that as usual the hour had gone by at which I was to
have been called, I jumped out of bed, and consumed as
much time as I possibly could in the hope of hearing a knock,
before I laid hold of the bell-rope, or opened the door to look
for my boots. It was all in vain however—ring I must, and
ring I did, five or six times before a soul came near me.

At last the girl appeared. How soon can you give me
breakfast?

As soon as you like Sir; what would you please to have,
Sir?

Nothing but a little tea and toast, with a fresh egg, if you
have one—

Yes Sir.

I shall be back in about an hour, and I must be away as
soon as possible after I get back.

Yes Sir—

Stay, stay—don't forget the egg; do you hear me?

Yes Sir—No Sir, I mean—we 'll not forget the egg.

After a full hour's walk over what is said to be the highest
part of the island, I came back, and without stopping to
inquire the way, went up to the little room I had occupied
the evening before. I found it now occupied with luggage,
and as if that were not enough to provoke me, with the luggage
of women, who judging by their shawls and bonnets
and umbrellas, and grey-cloaks lined with silk, and the huge
bag that I saw stuffed out like a feather-bed, must have been
ladies of a certain age—unmarried. Being rather surprised
at what I saw, I had begun to prepare for another tug at the
bell-rope—the more, as the cloth was not laid and there was
no sign of breakfast—when the red-haired girl came up, and
gave me to understand that I had no business in that room—

[figure description] Page 051.[end figure description]

the room that I had engaged and occupied and was paying
for, and that I was to have my breakfast below.

Below—where—

In the coffee-room—

In the coffee-room; I was told you had no coffee-room.

No more we have Sir; but there's a room below that you
can have now, as the gentleman has just gone out.

Indeed—I am very lucky—

Yes Sir.

And so I am to be turned out of my own room whether I
will or no, that I may have a chance of being turned out of
another man's room when the proprietor gets back?

If you please Sir; the ladies are expected every minute,
and if they should find you here—

If they should find me here. Why, what the deuse!—upon
my word young woman, I have a great mind to stay here till
they do come; and if they were not females I would throw
the baggage out of the window this minute, and leave your
master to settle the affair with them as he could. Where is
he—why did he not ask my leave?—

Law Sir! how could we ask your leave; wa'nt you gone
out to take a walk?

What could I say to that? Nothing. And so I did as I
was bid—walked down to the room below, where I repeated
the order for tea, toast, and a fresh egg. Still there was no
other sign of breakfast than a tea-pot and a canister, a table,
a chair, and a bell-rope, three things which I made immediate
use of, but with little or no effect you may suppose; for the
waiter did not appear till I had rung repeatedly, and when he
did there was neither egg nor toast. After a while however
the toast came, and I inquired for the egg; but no egg appeared
till I had actually finished my breakfast and begun to
ring for my bill. By this time I was in the mood for

[figure description] Page 052.[end figure description]

horsewhipping any body that might happen to fall in my way. I
do not know that I was ever so angry before—even with a
trifle, though trifles by the way are the very things to try the
temper of a man. I could always bear sorrow without flinching—
if it were heavy; trial, if it were enough to crush me,
without a word or a look to show that I suffered; any thing I
might say, if it were both unavoidable and severe. But I
never could behave like a man where to behave like a man
would appear to be the easiest thing in the world. The
wreck of a great hope I could bear—I could bear it, for I
have borne it;—the loss of much that I most loved on earth, I
could suffer, without a murmur and perhaps without a tear;
without losing either my self-command or my equanimity for
above a day. And yet, if my shoe-maker should bring me
a pair of shoes that pinched my feet—after I had given him
fair notice and full warning—or a pair of boots that were only
to be pulled on by half pulling my fingers off, I should
behave like a mad man, as every body knows. And so it is
with many, whose behaviour would be insupportable to a bystander,
if they were assailed by a petty every-day vexation.
But wreck them as it were, body and spirit, fortune health
and character; heap sorrow upon them; pile up grief upon
grief, and you see nothing but a little more gravity in their
look, and a little more serious manhood in their speech. They
may be paler for a time, they may look more thoughtful for
a season, but their foreheads will be high, their voices clear,
and their tread firm, till the shadow of death has gone by, or
till they have gone by for ever, on their way to the only city
of refuge for a proud man, who has outlived a majestic hope—
the grave.