1  never,  I  think,  felt  the  freshness  of  the  world,  and  the  truth  that  every
morning  is  a  new  day — a  universe  unbroken  and  fresh  for  effort  and  discovery
— so  much  as  two  mornings  ago  by  the  sea-side.  I  do  not  mean  that,  eAren
for  a  moment,  it  gave  a  conception  of  a  fresh  career  or  burst  in  life  for  me,
but  only  that  it  gave  me  a  conviction  of  a  fact.  To-day  all  is  changed,  but
again  I  feel  the  advantage  people  here  have  from  seeing  the  innumerable
moods  in  which  the  sea  presents  itself.  The  wind  is  driving  and  moaning
wildly — the  sea  all  white  on  the  beach — dark  and  cleft  into  grand  chasms  be
yond — and  almost  lost  in  not  a  dense  but  a  semi-transparent  mist  towards  the
horizon ;  the  carts  and  flys  which  go  past  the  dining-room  window  are  seen,
as  I  sit,  low  down,  as  if  they  were  on  the  brink  of  a  precipice ;  large  gulls,
with  their  wild,  strange  scream,  heard  every  now  and  then,  as  they  go  down
perpendicularly  to  the  surface  of  the  wave  that  has  brought  up  their  food,  or
floating  about  on  the  mist,  colorless  like  shadows — "And  I  would  that  my
tongue  could  utter — The  thoughts  that  arise  in  me."  For  at  this  moment  my
heart  is  in  perfect  unison  with  all  this  scene.  I  look  and  look,  until  I  wish  I  had
no  will.  Yet  the  loss  of  will,  with  all  the  other  faculties — memory,  conscience,
fancy — remaining,  is  surely  the  very  condition  of  insanity ;  for  the  will  alone
keeps  them  from  discord.  I  am  not  miserable,  however.  This  soothes  me.
