t to ourselves--cells--penitentiaries--where an old man may sit
sighing and groaning, or stupified in his misery--or at times almost
happy. So senseless, and worse than senseless, seems then all mortal
tribulation and anguish, while the self-communing soul is assured, by
its own profound responses, that "whatever is, is best."

And thus is our domicile a domain--a kingdom. We should not care to be
confined to it all the rest of our days. Seldom, indeed, do we leave our
own door--yet call on us, and ten to one you hear us in winter chirping
like a cricket, or in summer like a grasshopper. We have the whole range
of the house to ourselves, and many an Excursion make we on the Crutch.
Ascending and descending the wide-winding stair-cases, each broad step
not above two inches high, we find ourselves on spacious landing-places
illumined by the dim religious light of stained windows, on which
pilgrims, and palmers, and prophets, single or in pairs or troops, are
travelling on missions through glens or forests or by sea-shores--or
shepherd piping in the shade, or poet playing with the tangles of
Neaera's hair. We have discovered a new principle on which, within narrow
bounds, we have constructed Panoramic Dioramas, that show splendid
segments of the great circle of the world. We paint all of them
ourselves--now a Poussin, now a Thomson, now a Claude, now a Turner, now
a Rubens, now a Danby, now a Salvator, now a Maclise.

Most people, nay, we suspect all people but ourselves, make a point of
sleeping in the same bed (that is awkwardly expressed) all life through;
and out of that bed many of them avow their inability to "bow an eye;"
such is the power of custom, of habit, of use and wont, over weary
mortals even in the blessing of sleep. No such slavish fidelity do we
observe towards any one bed of the numerous beds in our mansion. No one
dormitory is entitled to plume itself, in the pride of its heart, on
being peculiarly Ours; nor is any one suffered to sink into despondency
from being debarred the privilege of contributing to Our repose. They
are all furnished, if not luxuriously, comfortably in the extreme; in
number, nine--each, of course, with its two dressing-rooms--those on the
same story communicating with one another, and with the parlours,
drawing-rooms, and libraries--"a mighty maze, but not without a plan,"
and all harmoniously combined by one prevailing and pervading spirit of
quietude by day and by night, awake o