268 WANDERINGS IN 



JOURNEY. 



FOURTH house pump and this tremendous cascade of 



iwrrawfecw 



nature, and what effect it might have upon the 

 sprain ; but the magnitude of the subject was too 

 overwhelming, and I was obliged to drop it. 



Perhaps, indeed, there was an unwarrantable 

 tincture of vanity in an unknown wanderer wish- 

 ing to have it in his power to tell the world, 

 that he had held his sprained foot under a fall of 

 water, which discharges six hundred and seventy 

 thousand two hundred and fifty-five tons per 

 minute. A gentle purling stream would have 

 suited better. Now, it would have become Wash- 

 ington to have quenched his battle-thirst in the 

 fall of Niagara; and there was something royal 

 in the idea of Cleopatra drinking pearl-vinegar, 

 made from the grandest pearl in Egypt : and it 

 became Caius Marius to send word, that he was 

 sitting upon the rains of Carthage. Here, we 

 have the person suited to the thing, and the thing 

 to the person. 



If, gentle reader, thou wouldst allow me to in- 

 dulge a little longer in this harmless pen-errantry, 

 I would tell thee, that I have had my ups and 

 downs in life, as well as other people ; for 

 I have climbed to the point of the conductor 

 above the cross on the top of St. Peter's, in 

 Rome, and left my glove there. I have stood on 

 one foot, upon the Guardian Angel's head, on 

 the castle of St. Angelo ; and, as I have just 

 told thee, I have been low down under the fall of 



