He has an extraordinary degree of strength of mind on most points—­and strong feeling, when it is not allowed to run in the natural channel, will sometimes force its way where it is not expected.  You will think it strange; but never up to this moment has he even alluded to the subject, before us—­never, at the moment of parting with us.  And yet, though he had not power to say one word, he could play at cricket with the boys on the very last evening.

We slept at the York House in Bath.  Bath is a beautiful town as a town, and the country harmonises well with it, without being a beautiful country.  As mere country, nobody would stand still to look at it; though as town country, many bodies would.  Somersetshire in general seems to be hideous, and I could fancy from the walls which intersect it in every direction, that they had been turned to stone by looking at the Gorgonic scenery.  The part of Devonshire through which our journey lay is nothing very pretty, though it must be allowed to be beautiful after Somersetshire.  We arrived here almost in the dark, and were besieged by the crowd of disinterested tradespeople, who would attend us through the town to our house, to help to unload the carriages.  This was not a particularly agreeable reception in spite of its cordiality; and the circumstance of there being not a human being in our house, and not even a rushlight burning, did not reassure us.  People were tired of expecting us every day for three weeks.  Nearly the whole way from Honiton to this place is a descent.  Poor dear Bummy said she thought we were going into the bowels of the earth, but suspect she thought we were going much deeper.  Between you and me, she does not seem delighted with Sidmouth; but her spirits are a great deal better, and in time she will, I dare say, be better pleased. We like very much what we have seen of it.  The town is small and not superfluously clean, but, of course, the respectable houses are not a part of the town.  Ours is one which the Grand Duchess Helena had, not at all grand, but extremely comfortable and cheerful, with a splendid sea view in front, and pleasant green, hills and trees behind.  The drawing-room’s four windows all look to the sea, and I am never tired of looking out of them.  I was doing so, with a most hypocritical book before me, when your letter arrived, and I felt all that you said in it.  I always thought that the sea was the sublimest object in nature.  Mont Blanc—­Niagara must be nothing to it. There, the Almighty’s form glasses itself in tempests—­and not only in tempests, but in calm—­in space, in eternal motion, in eternal regularity.  How can we look at it, and consider our puny sorrows, and not say, ’We are dumb—­because Thou didst it’?  Indeed, dear Mrs. Martin, we must feel every hour, and we shall feel every year, that what He did is well done—­and not only well, but mercifully.