home, so we returned. The Parade was crowded like Hyde Park in the
height of the season [Thackeray called Brighton London-super-Mare],
and when once I was out of the crowd and could look down upon it
from our windows as it promenaded up and down, I never saw anything
gayer: carriages of every description--most of them
open--cavalcades of ladies and gentlemen riding to and fro, throngs
of smart bonnets and fine dresses; and beyond all this the high
tide, with one broad crimson path across it, thrown by the sun,
looking as if it led into some enchanted world beyond the waters.

I thought of dear A----; for though she is seeing the sea--and I
think the sea at Ardgillan, with its lovely mountains on one side
and Skerries on the other, far more beautiful than this--I am sure
she would have been enchanted with the life, the bustle, and
brilliancy of the Parade combined with its fine sea view, for I,
who am apt rather selfishly to wish myself alone in the enjoyment
of nature, looked at the bright, moving throng with pleasure when
once I was out of it.

Our house at the theater at night was very fine; and now, as you
are perhaps tired of Brighton, you will not be sorry to get home
with me; but pray communicate the end of our "land sorrow" to
A----. We were to start for London Sunday morning at ten [a journey
of six hours by coach, now of less than two by rail], and my father
had taken three inside places in a coach, which was to call for us
at our inn. I ran down to the beach and had a few moments alone
there. It was a beautiful morning, and the fishing boats were one
by one putting out into the calmest sleepy sea. I longed to ask to
be taken on board one of them; but I was summoned away to the
coach, and found on reaching it that, the fourth place being
occupied by a sickly looking woman with a sickly looking child
nearly as big as herself in her lap, my father, notwithstanding the
coldness of the morning, had put himself on the outside. I went to
sleep; from which blessed refuge of the wretched I was recalled by
a powerful and indescribable smell, which, seizing me by the nose,
naturally induced me to open my eyes. Mother and daughter were each
devouring a lump of black, strong, greasy plum cake; as a specific,
I presume, against (or for?) sickness in a