ATTACK OF ILLNESS. 151 



bank with our yearly balance, and I have been confined 

 by small-pox ever since, with a face doubtless a good 

 deal less handsome than usual, and surrounded by faces 

 uglier than even my own. There were faces on the bed-cur- 

 tains, and faces on the walls, and faces in abundance on 

 my wife's tartan gown ; and when I shut my eyes to 

 exclude them, I just saw them all the more clearly. I 

 strove hard to call up more agreeable pictures. The 

 tree-ferns and saurians of the lias, or the half-tailed 

 fish and coccostei of the Old Red Sandstone, it would 

 be worth while getting into a fever to see ; but I called 

 upon them as vainly as Hotspur did upon the spirits of 

 the " vasty deep." I saw faces, faces, faces, and saw 

 nothing else. The phenomena of mind as exhibited in 

 disease have, I suspect, been studied a great deal too 

 little. Can you tell me how a person affected by fever 

 can be both a man and a magic lantern at the same time, 

 and marvel exceedingly in his capacity of spectator at 

 what he exhibits to himself in his character of showman ? 

 I am as much a geologist as ever, a huge breaker of 

 stones ; and I expect, when I have broken up a few 

 hundred cart-loads more, to know something of the 

 matter. I am fighting my way, all alone, by main 

 strength, the very antitype of Thor and his hammer, 

 and find that I have not been fourteen years a mason 



for nothing I must set myself in right earnest, 



sometime next summer, to draw up an account of the 

 geology of this part of the country. I have picked up 

 in a desultory way a good many facts, some of them of 

 value enough to be preserved; and I am of opinion, 

 besides, that the geology of Cromarty, well understood, 

 may serve, in part at least, as a kind of key to that of 

 Moray and of the various localities in which there occur 

 fish-beds of the same kind with ours. More splendid 



