le and embrace revived my life like the sun and the west wind.
Yes, at that epoch I felt like a morning traveller who doubts not that
from the hill he is ascending he shall behold a glorious sunrise; what
if the track be strait, steep, and stony? he sees it not; his eyes are
fixed on that summit, flushed already, flushed and gilded, and having
gained it he is certain of the scene beyond. He knows that the sun will
face him, that his chariot is even now coming over the eastern horizon,
and that the herald breeze he feels on his cheek is opening for the
god's career a clear, vast path of azure, amidst clouds soft as pearl
and warm as flame. Difficulty and toil were to be my lot, but sustained
by energy, drawn on by hopes as bright as vague, I deemed such a lot
no hardship. I mounted now the hill in shade; there were pebbles,
inequalities, briars in my path, but my eyes were fixed on the crimson
peak above; my imagination was with the refulgent firmament beyond, and
I thought nothing of the stones turning under my feet, or of the thorns
scratching my face and hands.

I gazed often, and always with delight, from the window of the diligence
(these, be it remembered, were not the days of trains and railroads).
Well! and what did I see? I will tell you faithfully. Green, reedy
swamps; fields fertile but flat, cultivated in patches that made them
look like magnified kitchen-gardens; belts of cut trees, formal as
pollard willows, skirting the horizon; narrow canals, gliding slow by
the road-side; painted Flemish farmhouses; some very dirty hovels; a
gray, dead sky; wet road, wet fields, wet house-tops: not a beautiful,
scarcely a picturesque object met my eye along the whole route; yet to
me, all was beautiful, all was more than picturesque. It continued fair
so long as daylight lasted, though the moisture of many preceding damp
days had sodden the whole country; as it grew dark, however, the rain
recommenced, and it was through streaming and starless darkness my eye
caught the first gleam of the lights of Brussels. I saw little of the
city but its lights that night. Having alighted from the diligence, a
fiacre conveyed me to the Hotel de ----, where I had been advised by a
fellow-traveller to put up; having eaten a traveller's supper, I retired
to bed, and slept a traveller's sleep.

Next morning I awoke from prolonged and sound repose with the impression
that I was yet in X----, and perceiving it to be broad daylight I
starte