tremendous rain!  Cloaks, shawls, and umbrellas were speedily produced; but we were two miles from shore, between the rising sea and the falling clouds, sick, wet, squeezed.  Oh the delights of that party of pleasure!  My father looked cadaverous, Dall was portentously silent, I shut my eyes and tried to sleep, being in that state when to see, or hear, or speak, or be spoken to, is equally fatal.  At length we reached the foot of the breakwater, and I sprang out of the boat, too happy to touch the stable rock.  The rain literally fell in sheets from the sky, and the wind blew half a hurricane; but I was on firm ground, and taking off my bonnet, which only served the purpose of a water-spout down my back, I ran, while Mr. M——­, holding my arm, strode along the mighty water-based road, while the angry sea, turning up black caldrons full of boiling foam, dashed them upon the barrier man has raised against its fury in magnificent, solemn wrath.  This breakwater is a noble work; the daring of the conception, its vast size and strength, and the utility of its purpose, are alike admirable.  We do these things and die; we ride upon the air and water, we guide the lightning and we bridle the sea, we borrow the swiftness of the wind and the fine subtlety of the fire; we lord it in this universe of ours for a day, and then our bodies are devoured by these material slaves we have controlled, and helplessly mingle their dust with the elements that have obeyed our will, who reabsorb the garment of our soul when that has fled—­whither?

The rain continuing to fall in torrents, and my father being wretchedly unwell, we gave up our purpose of visiting Mount Edgecombe, and returned to Plymouth.  The sea was horribly rough, even inside the breakwater; but I shut my eyes that I might not see how we heaved, and sang that I might not think how sick I was:  and so we reached shore, and I ran up and down the steep beach while the rest were disembarking, and the wind soon dried my light muslin clothes.  The other poor things continued drenched till we reached home.  After a good rest, we went to our dinner at Mr. W——­’s; my father was all right again, and our party, that had separated in such dismal plight, met again very pleasantly in the evening.  Mr. W——­ got quite tipsy with talking, an accident not uncommon with eager, excitable men, and all but overwhelmed me with an argument about dramatic writing, in which he was wrong from beginning to end....  We leave Plymouth to-morrow.

Sunday, August 7th.—­Started for Exeter at seven, and slept nearly the whole way by little bits; between each nap getting glimpses of the pleasant land that blended for a moment with my hazy, dream-like thoughts, and then faded away before my closing eyes.  One patch of moorland that I woke to see was lovely—­all purple heather and golden gorse; nature’s royal mantle thrown, it is true, over a barren soil, whose gray, cold, rifted ridges of rock