38 LETTERS FROM HIGH LATITUDES. [VI. 



from the house ; but the true family blood, I suppose, 

 began to show itself, and with a calmness almost frightful, 

 I received them one by one. 



After this began the public toasts. 



Although up to this time I had kept a certain portion of 

 my wits about me, the subsequent hours of the entertainment 

 became henceforth developed in a dreamy mystery. I can 

 perfectly recall the look of the sheaf of glasses that stood 

 before me, six in number ; I could draw the pattern of each : 

 I remember feeling a lazy wonder they should always be full, 

 though I did nothing but empty them, — and at last solved 

 the phenomenon by concluding I had become a kind of 

 Danaid, whose punishment, not whose sentence, had been 

 reversed : then suddenly I felt as if I were disembodied, — a 

 distant spectator of my own performances, and of the feast 

 at which my person remained seated. The voices of my host, 

 of the Rector, of the Chief Justice, became thin and low, as 

 though they reached me through a whispering tube; and when 

 I rose to speak, it was as to an audience in another sphere, 

 and in a language of another state of being : yet, however 

 unintelligible to myself, I must have been in some sort under- 

 stood, for at the end of each sentence, cheers, faint as the 

 roar of waters on a far-off strand, floated towards me ; and 

 if I am to believe a report of the proceedings subsequently 

 shown us, I must have become polyglot in my cups. Ac- 

 cording to that report it seems the Governor threw off (I 

 wonder he did not do something else), with the Queen's 

 health in French : to which I responded in the same language. 

 Then the Rector, in English, proposed my health, — under 

 the circumstances a cruel mockery, — but to which, ill as I 

 was, I responded very gallantly by drinking to the beaux 

 yeux of the Countess. Then somebody else drank success 

 to Great Britain, and I see it was followed by really a very 

 learned discourse by Lord D., in honour of the ancient Ice- 

 landers; during which he alluded to their discovery of 

 America, and Columbus' visit. Then came a couple of 

 speeches in Icelandic, after which the Bishop, in a magnifi- 



