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Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
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Untitled Article
the coast one may almost say the fewer trees * all gave me the sensation which I needed of vast space , where I might range as far as physical strength would allow * without interruption or intrusion . For disease had . generated a deep aversion to society , 3 , shrinking from the presence of humanity . The feeling was not at all the less distressful from being unnatural and unaccountable .
The apprehension of a call would produce a nervous tremor , and on the commonest exchange of courtesies , I had to pay a tax of pain which kindness , knowing it , would have regarded as a prohibitory duty . Much , therefore , was it to me to see and feel that there were neither visiters at my door , nor acquaintances in my path * Even woods my imagination would have peopled ; streets I could not have endured ; and in a narrow bounded scene like that of Shanklin , I should never have emerged from the ravine ,
or have passed the projection , without expecting to come suddenly upon somebody who would talk to me ; 1 should neyer even have looked towards them without expecting momentarily to see some one approaching from behind or from above . But at Sandown there were only those quiet and beautiful and everlasting objects which grew near to my heart because they never moved towards me , and became powerful over me , by their very quies ? cence . I often loved the hills better than the billows , because
they did . not roar and roll and tumble , like bustling people determined to be influential . And while the general effect upon me was pure and peaceful * there were particular objects which , as in succession they attracted my attention , acted as stimuli , and roused my imagination to exercise , which , though sometimes it was extravagant enough , and partook of the morbidness of disease as yet unconquered , nevertheless was , upon the . whole , healthful and restorative .
All scenery acts upon the mind by the power of association ; but the only associations which I felt in the objects around me , in addition to the simple , natural , and universal ones of colour and form , were those of pure fancy , and not of historical recollection . For the latter , from Isabella de Fortibus down to Wilkes and forty-five , I cared nothing , even though the Villakin was there , its disproportionately large kitchen the last remaining
monument of its master ' s taste . The green hills behind ; the brown cliffs stretching away towards the bastion rock near Shanklin on the right , on which the finger of Time had traced a thousand hieroglyphics , which it would rather require the genius of a Jean Paul Richter , than of a Champollion , to decypher ; the white
. cliffs stretching away to the left , broken only by that little amphitheatre of red rock which rises from the ground into which it sunk -at Alum Bay , until they swell into the lofty heights of Culver ; and the infinite sea before , with its everlasting sameness , and in its everlasting changes ; smooth and swelling , green , dar ) k , and sparkling , in sunlight and in moonlight ,. or shrouded in the ma ^
Untitled Article
Sundown Bap . ' $$$
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), April 2, 1832, page 273, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1810/page/57/
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