sensation would it cause in Lothbury? What vehement laughter would it
not excite among

The daughters of Cheapside, and wives of Lombard-street.

I am sure that no town-bred, or inland-born subjects, can feel their
true and natural nourishment at these sea-places. Nature, where she
does not mean us for mariners and vagabonds, bids us stay at home. The
salt foam seems to nourish a spleen. I am not half so good-natured
as by the milder waters of my natural river. I would exchange these
sea-gulls for swans, and scud a swallow for ever about the banks of
Thamesis.




THE CONVALESCENT


A pretty severe fit of indisposition which, under the name of a
nervous fever, has made a prisoner of me for some weeks past, and is
but slowly leaving me, has reduced me to an incapacity of reflecting
upon any topic foreign to itself. Expect no healthy conclusions from
me this month, reader; I can offer you only sick men's dreams.

And truly the whole state of sickness is such; for what else is it
but a magnificent dream for a man to lie a-bed, and draw day-light
curtains about him; and, shutting out the sun, to induce a total
oblivion of all the works which are going on under it? To become
insensible to all the operations of life, except the beatings of one