There are some kinds of indisposition that instead of weakening the faculties of the mind, serve only to render them more vigorous and sprightly, and in proportion as the body is debilitated, the mind is strengthened. I have every reason to believe that the imagination never soars to such lofty heights as it sometimes does in sickness. But where am I! What about—Well may _you_ ask the question. Believe me, Cousin, I have attempted to finish this letter 4 times this day. I cannot account for my inability to write. It used to be the joy of my life, nothing delighted me so much as to steal into the chamber by myself and scribble an hour, but since I received your last I have often attempted to answer it, but in vain. I have a stubborn brain; it must be coaxed, not driven. I find there is nothing so tedious as to write when we are not in the mood for it. You may easily see that I am not in one at present. Now for Heaven’s sake see what I have written—find the chain that connects. When I began I meant to say I had been quite unwell ever since I left Portland, that some disorders only served to give vigor to the mind, &c., &c., but I _meant_ also to say mine was altogether of a different nature. But as I left that out, so I had better have done the other. Oh—’tis too, too bad! I’ll not write another till I think I can understand it after it is written. I am low-spirited, stupid and everything else. Wednesday. Now I shall really think I have no _soul_ if I find myself as destitute of ideas as I was on Sunday. I have just been viewing the most delightful prospect I have seen this long time, and if it has left no more impression on my mind than objects passing before a mirror, I shall think myself devoid of every quality that constitutes us rational beings. I think nature has done everything to render Bath pleasant: the window at which I now sit commands a most delightful water prospect; the river is about a mile in breadth at this place, the opposite banks are neither sublime nor beautiful. What if I for a moment should take a poet’s license, and by the force of imagination project steep and rugged rocks! bid them stoop with awful majesty to reflect their gloomy horrors in the wave! See you not that enormous precipice whose awful summit was ne’er profaned by human footsteps? Does not your blood freeze as it creeps along your veins? Behold again that barren waste, the axe nor the plough have never clothed it with a borrowed charm, or robbed it of those nature bestowed upon it; it still boasts its independence of the labor of man. But to leave fiction for reality, the surface of the water is a perfect mirror. I never saw it so perfectly smooth; at this moment there is a boat passing, rowed by two men—the reflection in the water is so distinct, so very clear, it looks like two boats. I admire to see a boat _rowed_; it seems to look like arms or wings, moving with graceful