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Royal Tunbridge Wells
I go in and ask the young ladies at the counter for Manjroni; or, The One-handed Monk, and Life in London; or, The Adventures of Corinthian Tom, Jeremiah Hawthorn, Esquire, and their friend Bob Logic ?—absurd ! I turn away-abashed from the casement—from the Pantiles —no longer Pantiles, but Parade. I stroll over the Common and survey the beautiful purple hills around, twinkling with a thousand bright villas, which have sprung up over this charming ground since first I saw it. What an admirable scene of peace and plenty! What a delicious air breathes over the heath, blows the cloud-shadows across it, and murmurs through the full-clad trees ! Can the world show a land fairer, richer, more cheerful ? I see a portion of it when I look up from the window at which I write. But fair scene, green wood, bright terraces gleaming in sunshine, and purple clouds swollen with summer rain—nay, the very pages over which my head bends—disappear from before my eyes. They are looking backwards, back into forty years off, into a dark room, into a little house hard by on the Common here, in the Bartlemytide holidays. The parents have gone to town for two days : the house is all his own and a grim 282 |
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