Yet, after all, few things would give me more real pleasure than to know that my friends across the water would consent to take me at my word; and, considering what I have said about them as so much public matter—which it truly is—agree to reckon me in my absence, as they always did when I was amongst them—and I am sure they would count me if I went back again—as a private friend. I differed with them in politics, and I differ with them now as much as ever; but I sincerely wish them happiness individually; and as a nation, I shall rejoice if they prosper. As the Persians write, “What can I say more?” And I only hope these few words may help to make my peace with people who justly pride themselves on bearing no malice. As for myself, I have no peace to make; for I have studiously avoided reading any of the American criticisms on my book, in order that the kindly feelings I have ever entertained towards that country should not be ruffled. By this abstinence, I may have lost some information, and perhaps missed many opportunities of correcting erroneous impressions. But I set so much store by the pleasing recollection of the journey itself, and of the hospitality with which my family were every where received, that, whether it be right, or whether it be wrong, I cannot bring myself to read any thing which might disturb these agreeable associations. So let us part in peace! or rather, let us meet again in cordial communication; and if this little work shall find its way across the Atlantic, I hope it will be read there without reference to any thing that has passed between us; or, at all events, with reference only to those parts of our former intercourse which are satisfactory to all parties. After leaving the American coast, we stood once more across the gulf stream for Bermuda. Here I find the first trace of a regular journal, containing a few of those characteristic touches which, when we are sure of their being actually made on the spot, however carelessly, carry with them an easy, familiar kind of interest, that rarely belongs to the efforts of memory alone. It is, indeed, very curious how much the smallest memorandums sometimes serve to lighten up apparently forgotten trains of thought, and to bring vividly before the imagination scenes long past, and to recall turns of expression, and even the very look with which these expressions were uttered, though every circumstance connected with them may have slept in the mind for a long course of years. It is, I believe, one of the numerous theories on the mysterious subject of dreams, that they are merely trains of recollections, touched in some way we know not of, and influenced by various causes over which we have no sort of control; and that, although they are very strangely jumbled and combined, they always relate, so exclusively, either to past events, or to past thoughts, that no ideas strictly new ever enter our minds in sleep.