MY DEAR FELLOW AND FRIEND,--At the hour of midnight, with the moon shining in at my open window, the sound of the rushing Arve in my ears,--around me, a fine table of land a hundred feet above the stream that washes its base, and covered with a hundred noble chestnuts, and laid out with beautiful walks,--thus "being and situate," I take in hand this abominable steel pen to write you. Envy me not, William Ware! Let no man, that is well, envy him that is sick. If I were "lying and being and situate," as the deeds have it, and as I ought to have it, I should think myself an object of envy, that is, supposing I thought at all. No; in this charmed land, and in every land where I go, I bear a burden of diseased nerves which I might well exchange for the privilege of living on the Isle of Shoals, could I but have the constitution of some of its pechereux (by contraction, pesky) inhabitants. . . . There has come a new day, and I have got a new [171] pen. Last night I was too much awake; I got up from my bed and wrote in my dressing-gown; to-day I am too much asleep. But allons, and see what will come of it. This morning we walked into Geneva to church, the air so clear that it seemed as if we could count every tile on the houses. The chimneys are crowned with a forest of tin pipes, twisted in every direction to carry off smoke. At dusky eve, in a superstitious time, a man, coming suddenly upon the town, might think that an army of goblins had just alighted upon its roofs. . . . What stupendous things do ages accumulate upon every spot where they have passed! Every time we go into town we pass by the very place where Servetus was burned. And Geneva is old enough to have seen Julius Caesar! . . . Here's another new day, William; and I wish I were a new man. But the heavens are bright, and the air so clear that I can define every man's patch of vineyard and farm on the Jura, ten miles off; every fissure and seam on Saleve, two miles back of us; and through a gap in the Saleve, I do not doubt, were I to go out on the grounds, I could see the top of Mont Blanc. And yet lay one or two ounces' weight on a man's brain, and a tackle, standing on the Jura, Saleve, and Mont Blanc together, can't lift him up. You see, I am resolved you shan't envy me. However, not to be too lugubrious, I am improving; that is, the paroxysms of this trouble are less severe, though I am far from being relieved of the burden. But it is time I turn to your letter, which I received here with Henry's, on the 12th June. Thank him, for I cannot write you both now. Much news he gave me; [172] but how much that was distressing, and that concerning himself most of all. What is to become of our churches? And what is he to do? It relieves me very much to hear that Gannett's case is no worse. My love and sympathy to him when you see him. Is he not one of our noblest and most disinterested, as well as ablest men,--nay, as an extemporaneous speaker, unrivalled among us? . . .