to scenes of heroism and adventure. The
famous ride in 'Geoffrey Hamlyn,' where the fate of the heroine,
threatened with worse than death from the bush-rangers, hangs upon the
horse's speed, seems to us, as we lie abed, one of the finest episodes
in fiction. 'Tom Cringle's Log,' too, becomes a great favourite, not
more from its buoyancy and freshness than from the melodramatic scenes
with which it is interspersed.

In some moods of the sick man's mind, his morbid appetite tends,
strange to say, to horrors. He 'snatches a fearful joy' from the weird
and supernatural. I have known those terrible tales of Le Fanu,
entitled 'In a Glass Darkly,' which for dramatic power and eeriness no
other novelist has ever approached, devoured greedily by those whose
physical sustenance has been dry toast and arrowroot.

The works of Thackeray are too cynical for the convalescent; he is for
the present in too good a humour with destiny and human nature to enjoy
them. He prefers the more cheerful aspects of life, and resents the
least failure of poetic justice.

Taking the tenants of the sick ward all round, indeed, I have little
doubt that the large majority would give their vote for Dickens. His
pathos, it is true, is too much for them. Their hearts are as waxen as
though Mrs. Jarley herself had made them. They are just in the
condition to be melted by 'Little Nell,' and overcome by the death of
Paul Dombey. They read 'David Copperfield' with avidity, but are
careful to avoid the catastrophe of Dora and even the demise of her
four-footed favourite. The book that suits them best is 'Martin
Chuzzlewit.' Its genial comedy, quite different from the violent
delights of 'Pickwick,' is well adapted to their grasp; while its
tragedy, the murder of Montague Tigg--the finest description of the
breaking of the sixth commandment in the language--leaves nothing to be
desired in the way of excitement. But here we stray beyond our bounds,
for 'Martin Chuzzlewit' is not a 'sick book;' or rather, it is one of
the very few productions of human genius on the merits of which the
opinions of both Sick and Sound are at one.

_WET HOLIDAYS._

Even poets when they are on their travels feel the depressing influence
of bad weather. Those lines of the Laureate--

'But when we crossed the Lombard plain,
Remember what a plague of rain--
Of rain at Reggio, at Parma,
At Lodi rain, Piacenza rain,'

are not among his best, but they evi