I think, also, there is something
fine in the many-roofed, many-chimneyed highlands of Chelsea (if it is
Chelsea), as you draw near the railroad bridge, and there is a pretty
stone church on a hill-side there which has the good fortune, so rare with
modern architecture and so common with the old, of seeming a natural
outgrowth of the spot where it stands, and which is as purely an object of
aesthetic interest to me, who know nothing of its sect or doctrine, as any
church in a picture could be; and there is, also, the Marine Hospital on
the heights (if it is the Marine Hospital), from which I hope the inmates
can behold the ocean, and exult in whatever misery keeps them ashore.
But let me not so hasten over this part of my friend's journey as to omit
all mention of the amphibious Irish houses which stand about on the low
lands along the railroad-sides, and which you half expect to see plunge
into the tidal mud of the neighborhood, with a series of hoarse croaks, as
the train approaches. Perhaps twenty-four trains pass those houses every
twenty-four hours, and it is a wonder that the inhabitants keep their
interest in them, or have leisure to bestow upon any of them.
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