strength of mind on most points--and strong feeling, when it is not allowed to run in the natural channel, will sometimes force its way where it is not expected. You will think it strange; but never up to this moment has he even alluded to the subject, before _us_--never, at the moment of parting with us. And yet, though he had not power to say _one word_, he could play at cricket with the boys on the very last evening. We slept at the York House in Bath. Bath is a beautiful town _as a town_, and the country harmonises well with it, without being a beautiful country. As _mere country_, nobody would stand still to look at it; though as town country, many bodies would. Somersetshire in general seems to be hideous, and I could fancy from the walls which intersect it in every direction, that they had been turned to stone by looking at the _Gorgonic_ scenery. The part of Devonshire through which our journey lay is nothing _very_ pretty, though it must be allowed to be beautiful after Somersetshire. We arrived here almost in the dark, and were besieged by the crowd of disinterested tradespeople, who _would_ attend us through the town to our house, to help to unload the carriages. This was not a particularly agreeable reception in spite of its cordiality; and the circumstance of there being not a human being in our house, and not even a rushlight burning, did not reassure us. People were tired of expecting us every day for three weeks. Nearly the whole way from Honiton to this place is a descent. Poor dear Bummy said she thought we were going into the _bowels of the earth_, but suspect she thought we were going much deeper. Between you and me, she does not seem _delighted_ with Sidmouth; but her spirits are a great deal better, and in time she will, I dare say, be better pleased. _We_ like very much what we have seen of it. The town is small and not superfluously clean, but, of course, the respectable houses are not a part of the town. Ours is one which the Grand Duchess Helena had, not at all _grand_, but extremely comfortable and cheerful, with a splendid sea view in front, and pleasant green, hills and trees behind. The drawing-room's four windows all look to the sea, and I am never tired of looking out of them. I was doing so, with a most hypocritical book before me, when your letter arrived, and I _felt_ all that you said in it. I always thought that the sea was the sublimest object in nature. Mont Blanc--Niagara must be nothing to it. _There_, the Almighty's form glasses itself in tempests--and not only in tempests, but in calm--in space, in eternal motion, in eternal regularity. How can we look at it, and consider our puny sorrows, and not say, 'We are dumb--because _Thou_ didst it'? Indeed, dear Mrs. Martin, we must feel every hour, and we shall feel every year, that what He did is _well done_--and not only well, but mercifully.