chalybeate; at any rate, it was pure; and the good effect of the
various waters which invalids are sent to drink depends, I believe,
more on the air, exercise, and change of scene, than on their
medicinal qualities. I therefore determined to turn my morning
walks towards it, and seek for health from the nymph of the
fountain, partaking of the beverage offered to the tenants of the
shade.

Chance likewise led me to discover a new pleasure equally beneficial
to my health. I wished to avail myself of my vicinity to the sea
and bathe; but it was not possible near the town; there was no
convenience. The young woman whom I mentioned to you proposed
rowing me across the water amongst the rocks; but as she was
pregnant, I insisted on taking one of the oars, and learning to row.
It was not difficult, and I do not know a pleasanter exercise. I
soon became expert, and my train of thinking kept time, as it were,
with the oars, or I suffered the boat to be carried along by the
current, indulging a pleasing forgetfulness or fallacious hopes.
How fallacious! yet, without hope, what is to sustain life, but the
fear of annihilation--the only thing of which I have ever felt a
dread. I cannot bear to think of being no more--of losing myself--
though existence is often but a painful consciousness of misery;
nay, it appears to me impossible that I should cease to exist, or
that this active, restless spirit, equally alive to joy and sorrow,
should only be organised dust--ready to fly abroad the moment the
spring snaps, or the spark goes out which kept it together. Surely
something resides in this heart that is not perishable, and life is
more than a dream.

Sometimes, to take up my oar once more, when the sea was calm, I was