If a healthy man, entering upon a temporary imprisonment, hangs his walls with a paper covered with roses, and every one sympathises in this forethought for his mind’s health, much more should the invalid, (who, though he must be a prisoner, has yet liberty of choice where his prison shall be,) provide for sustaining and improving his attachment to Nature, and for beguiling his sufferings, by the unequalled refreshments she affords. He will be wise to sacrifice indolence, habit, money and convenience, at the outset, to place himself where he can command the widest or the most beautiful view that can be had without sacrificing advantages more essential still. There are few things more essential still: but there are some;--such as medical attendance, and a command of the ordinary conveniences of life. What is the best kind of view for a sick prisoner’s windows to command? I have chosen the sea, and am satisfied with my choice. We should have the widest expanse of sky, for night scenery. We should have a wide expanse of land or water, for the sake of a sense of liberty, yet more than for variety; and also because then the inestimable help of a telescope may be called in. Think of the difference to us between seeing from our sofas the width of a street, even if it be Sackville-street, Dublin, or Portland Place, in London, and thirty miles of sea view, with its long boundary of rocks, and the power of sweeping our glance over half a county, by means of a telescope! But the chief ground of preference of the sea is less its space than its motion, and the perpetual shifting of objects caused by it. There can be nothing in inland scenery which can give the sense of life and motion and connexion with the world like sea changes. The motion of a waterfall is too continuous,--too little varied,--as the breaking of the waves would be, if that were all the sea could afford. The fitful action of a windmill,--the waving of trees, the ever-changing aspects of mountains are good and beautiful: but there is something more life-like in the going forth and return of ships, in the passage of fleets, and in the never-ending variety of a fishery.