The weather was dull and cold, and a glorious fire blazed in the large grate, fed and tended by a third noiseless apparition, the Soft, in the shape of a boy, who gently deposited black boulders of coal without raising any dust, and with a brush delicately invited away the ashes from the bars and the hearth, and poked as one would kiss a sleeping babe. The eyes of the Soft did not wander; they were kept snug beneath their lids with well-trained reverence; and this genius of the fire always appeared as soon as the glow began to fade, as if by inspiration. In my large chamber, draped with white muslin over rose color and drab damask, a superb fire glowed. I must make an end of this nonsense. The next day I drove about Bath to get apartments,--the first hour in vain; and everybody said the city was full, and we should not succeed. The children cried out to stay in York House, enjoying the luxury. But again I took a Bath chair, and with Fanny the nurse at my side to talk for me, and Rosebud to look out for signs of "To Let," we tried again, and found this modest house; where, such is the simplicity of my nature, I am ten times as comfortable and at home as at even York House, with its shaded grandeur. Yet I am very fond of splendor, I have to confess; and, moreover, our surprise was great when, upon demanding the account, the Sublime brought on a silver salver charges actually more moderate than those of many inferior hotels all about England. I will proceed here with our visit to Redcar, though that occurred in 1859, when we had returned from Rome. Redcar is in the midst of a stately region, grand with an outline of hard-bosomed, endless beach and vast sky, of sea and sand-hills, where my father stands forth very distinctly in my memory. When he went out at fixed hours of the day, between the hours for writing, he walked over the long, long beach, and very often with my brother and myself; stopping now and then in his firm, regal tread to look at what nature could do in far-stretching color and beckoning horizon line. Along the sand-hills, frolicking in the breeze or faithfully clinging in the strong wind to their native thimbleful of earth, hung the cerulean harebells, to which I ardently clambered, listening for their chimes. In the preface to "Monte Beni," the compliment paid to Redcar is well hidden. My father speaks of reproducing the book (sketched out among the dreamy interests of Florence) "on the broad and dreary sands of Redcar, with the gray German Ocean tumbling in upon me, and the northern blast always howling in my ears." Nothing could have pleased him better as an atmosphere for his work; all that the atmosphere included he did not mean to admit, just then. And London was not so very far away.