It has vanished as by a spell. There is nothing like
a throwing off the harness and giving mind and body a holiday--a treat
to all sorts of new objects. Once, a wretched, nervous feeling grew
upon me; I flung it off by mounting a stage-coach, and then taking a
walk from the Land's End, in Cornwall, to the north of Devon. It was
gone for ever! Another time the "jolly" late dinners and
blithely-circulating decanter, with literary men, that I found it
almost impossible to avoid altogether without cutting very valuable
connections, gave me a dreadful dyspepsia. I became livingly sensible
of the agonies of Prometheus with the daily vulture gnawing at his
vitals. At once I started with all my family for a year's sojourn in
Germany, which, in fact, proved three years. But the fiend had left me
the very first day. The moment I quitted the British shore, the
tormentor quitted me. I suppose he preferred staying behind, where he
was aware of so many promising subjects of his diabolical art. New
diet, new and early hours, and all the novelties of foreign life, made
his approach to me impossible. I have known him no more, during these
now thirty years.
Eighteen years ago I made the circumnavigation of the globe, going out
to Australia by the Cape of Good Hope, and returning by Cape Horn.
This, including two years of wandering in the woods and wilds of
Australia, evidently gave a new accession of vital stamina to my
frame.
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