odd, if, after missing his object while seeking it by the light of
reason, he should prove to have stumbled upon it in his misty
excursions beyond the limits of sanity.


LONDON, February 29, 1845.

MY DEAR FRIEND: Old associations cling to the mind with astonishing
tenacity. Daily custom grows up about us like a stone wall, and
consolidates itself into almost as material an entity as mankind's
strongest architecture. It is sometimes a serious question with me
whether ideas be not really visible and tangible, and endowed with
all the other qualities of matter. Sitting as I do at this moment in
my hired apartment, writing beside the hearth, over which hangs a
print of Queen Victoria, listening to the muffled roar of the
world's metropolis, and with a window at but five paces distant,
through which, whenever I please, I can gaze out on actual London,--
with all this positive certainty as to my whereabouts, what kind of
notion, do you think, is just now perplexing my brain? Why,--would
you believe it?--that all this time I am still an inhabitant of that
wearisome little chamber,--that whitewashed little chamber,--that
little chamber with its one small window, across which, from some
inscrutable reason of taste or convenience, my landlord had placed a
row of iron bars,--that same little chamber, in short, whither your
kindness has so often brought you to visit me! Will no length of
time or breadth of space enfranchise me from that unlovely abode? I
travel; but it seems to be like the snail, with my house upon my
head. Ah, well! I am verging, I suppose, on that period of life
when present scenes and events make but feeble impressions in
comparison with those of yore; so that I must reconcile myself to be