d up, imagining that I had overslept myself and should be behind
time at the counting-house. The momentary and painful sense of restraint
vanished before the revived and reviving consciousness of freedom, as,
throwing back the white curtains of my bed, I looked forth into a wide,
lofty foreign chamber; how different from the small and dingy, though
not uncomfortable, apartment I had occupied for a night or two at a
respectable inn in London while waiting for the sailing of the packet!
Yet far be it from me to profane the memory of that little dingy room!
It, too, is dear to my soul; for there, as I lay in quiet and darkness,
I first heard the great bell of St. Paul's telling London it was
midnight, and well do I recall the deep, deliberate tones, so full
charged with colossal phlegm and force. From the small, narrow window
of that room, I first saw THE dome, looming through a London mist. I
suppose the sensations, stirred by those first sounds, first sights, are
felt but once; treasure them, Memory; seal them in urns, and keep them
in safe niches! Well--I rose. Travellers talk of the apartments in
foreign dwellings being bare and uncomfortable; I thought my chamber
looked stately and cheerful. It had such large windows--CROISEES that
opened like doors, with such broad, clear panes of glass; such a great
looking-glass stood on my dressing-table--such a fine mirror glittered
over the mantelpiece--the painted floor looked so clean and glossy;
when I had dressed and was descending the stairs, the broad marble steps
almost awed me, and so did the lofty hall into which they conducted.
On the first landing I met a Flemish housemaid: she had wooden shoes, a
short red petticoat, a printed cotton bedgown, her face was broad,
her physiognomy eminently stupid; when I spoke to her in French, she
answered me in Flemish, with an air the reverse of civil; yet I thought
her charming; if she was not pretty or polite, she was, I conceived,
very picturesque; she reminded me of the female figures in certain Dutch
paintings I had seen in other years at Seacombe Hall.

I repaired to the public room; that, too, was very large and very lofty,
and warmed by a stove; the floor was black, and the stove was black, and
most of the furniture was black: yet I never experienced a freer
sense of exhilaration than when I sat down at a very long, black table
(covered, however, in part by a white cloth), and, having ordered
breakfast, began to pour out my c