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    i * oar of the passionate billows into the gentle rippling that only murmurs peace . Frequently as I have visited the Isle of Wight , it somehow happened that I had never taken more than a very cursory view of that part of it which is now the most endeared to iiie , until the completeness of its solitude and the congeniality of its scenery attracted me thither , and fixed me there , at a time when I was so thoroughly invalided as to be incapable of all exertion ; and the only power left me was what metaphysical theologians call ' passive power , ' the capacity of being acted upon by external influences . Hence the scenery of Sandown Bay imprinted itself upon my mind and heart : it wrought itself into me ; its objects were so many agencies , each identified with some portions of the process by which I again became myself . And as that process might almost be described as the re-construction of my little "world after it had been dashed into chaos , no wonder that the traces should be vivid and indelible .

    Mine was , indeed , just then a deplorable condition . Anxiety , and exertion , and illness , had worked the animal machine so furiously and so irregularly , and pulled it about in so many different ways , that the whole was in terrible disorder . Food had ceased to nourish me , —light had ceased to gladden me , —the reports of my senses were not to be trusted , my eyes saw sights , and my ears heard sounds , which were not sights and sounds , but only internal sensations , —my muscles would often suddenly refuse to obey the will , and the limbs ceased to act , while the heart made up * for their deficiency of motion by the rapidity and violence of its pulsations . All the tissues of which modern physiologists talk seemed to relax in the cohesiveness of their constituent atoms , and Monas Termo daily threatened to assert his individuality and independence . Strange thoughts came uncalled for , and would not depart when bidden . Falsehoods and sophisms usurped possession of the mind , and I detected them , and yet they mastered me . I knew that I saw things through a discoloured medium ^ and yet I could see them through no other medium . The poor soul sat upon the pineal gland , with the brain tossing around her , like some antediluvian king whom the flood had driven to the last mountain top , his broad lands all overwhelmed around , and the rains yet pouring down from above .

    What I went through ^ and how I reached my rest and renewed my course , the reader has already partly seen in the preceding chapters of these Reminiscences , and I shall soon resume the tale ; but this chapter is consecrated as an affectionate memorial to the scenery of Sa , ndown Bay . Solitude and safety were the first sensations it inspired . The very extent of the bay ; the sweep of that graceful arch , whose ocean chord is miles in length ; the protecting hills behind , completing the circle with the shoreless ocean in front ; the few dwellings , and of the part nearest

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    % 72 t Sundown Bay *

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), April 2, 1832, page 272, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1810/page/56/