tion seem to be becoming rarer every year,
for as death disturbs them society seems to lack the spirit or the
good taste, or the ability, to replace them."

Brighton is a very pleasant place, because it combines the advantages of
a seaside resort with those of a clean and cheerful city. Walking along
the front, you have a brave outlook to the blue sea on one hand, and
elegant shop-windows and fine hotels on the other. A little back in the
town on a hill is the fine old fifteenth-century church of St. Nicholas,
in which there is perhaps the most curious carved Norman font in England;
but all this is known to so few visitors, that I feel as if I were
telling a great secret in letting it out. Smith's book-store on the
Western Road, and Bohn's near the station, are kept by very well-informed
and very courteous men. I have been much indebted to the former in many
ways, and found by his aid many a greatly needed and rare work.

When I first went to Brighton there was one evening a brilliant aurora
borealis. As I looked at it, I heard an Englishman say, to my great
amazement, it was the first time he had ever seen one in his life! I
once saw one in America of such extraordinary brilliancy and duration,
that it prolonged the daylight for half an hour or more, till I became
amazed, and then found it was a Northern Light. It lasted till sunrise
in all its splendour. I have taken down from Algonkin Indians several
beautiful legends relating to them. In one, the Milky Way is the girdle
of a stupendous deity, and the Northern Lights the splendid gleams
emitted by his ball when playing. In another, the narrator describes him
as clad in an ineffable glory of light, and in colours unknown on earth!

And this reminds me further that I have just read in the newspapers of
the death of Edwin Booth, who was born during the famous star shower of
1833, which phenomenon I witnessed from beginning to end, and remember as
if it were only yesterday. Now, I was actually dreaming that I was in a
room in which _cigars_ were flying about in every direction, when my
father came and woke me and my brother Henry, to come and see an
exceeding great marvel. There were for a long time many thousands of
stars at once in the sky, all shooting, as it were, or converging towards
a centre. They were not half so long as the meteors which we see; one or
two had a crook or bend in the middle, _e.g._

{The meteor pattern: p409.jpg}

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