ed by a rustic that this
figure was the image of Harkiles (Hercules), a heathen god formerly
worshipped in the old Catholic convent upon the hill, in the old times!

From London we went in August, 1870, to Brighton, staying at first at the
Albion Hotel. There, under the influence of fresh sea-air, long walks
and drives in all the country round, I began to feel better, yet it was
not for many weeks that I fairly recovered. A chemist named Phillips,
who supplied me with bromide of potass, suggested to me, to his own loss,
that I took a great deal too much. I left it off altogether,
substituting pale ale. Finding this far better, I asked Mr. Phillips if
he could not prepare for me _lupulin_, or the anodyne of hops. He
laughed, and said, "Do you find the result required in ale?" I answered,
"Yes." "And do you like ale?" "Yes." "Then," he answered, "why don't
you _drink_ ale?" And I did, but before I took it up my very vitality
seemed to be well-nigh exhausted with the bromide.

Samuel Laing, M.P., the chairman of the Brighton Railway, had at that
time a house in Brighton, with several sons and daughters, the latter of
whom have all been very remarkable for beauty and accomplishments. In
this home there was a hospitality so profuse, so kind, so brilliant and
refined, that I cannot really remember to have ever seen it equalled, and
as we fully participated in it at all times in every form, I should feel
that I had omitted the deepest claim to my gratitude if I did not here
acknowledge it. Mr. Laing was or is of a stock which deeply appealed to
my sympathies, for he is the son of the famous translator of the
_Heimskringla_, a great collection of Norse sagas, which I had read, and
in which he himself somewhat aided. Of late years, since he has retired
from more active financial business, Mr. Laing has not merely turned his
attention to literature; he has deservedly distinguished himself by
translating, as I may say, into the clearest and most condensed or
succinct and lucid English ever written, so as to be understood by the
humblest mind, the doctrines of Darwin, Huxley, and the other leading
scientific minds of the day. Heine in his time received a great deal of
credit for having thus acted as the flux and furnace by which the ore of
German philosophy was smelted into pure gold for general circulation; but
I, who have translated all that Heine wrote on this subject, declare that
he was at such work as far inferi