it continued after the power of comprehension was
gone. His dearly-prized books, indeed, were a pleasure to him almost to
the end, and he would walk slowly round his library looking at them, and
taking them down mechanically.

In the earlier stages of his disorder (if the term may be fitly applied
to a case which was not a perversion of the faculties, but their decay)
he could still converse at times with much of his old liveliness and
energy. When the mind was, as it were, set going upon some familiar
subject, for a little time you could not perceive much failure; but if
the thread was broken, if it was a conversation in which new topics were
started, or if any argument was commenced, his powers failed him at
once, and a painful sense of this seemed to come over him for the
moment. His recollection first failed as to recent events, and his
thoughts appeared chiefly to dwell upon those long past, and as his mind
grew weaker, these recollections seemed to recede still farther back.
Names he could rarely remember, and more than once, when trying to
recall one which he felt he ought to know, I have seen him press his
hand upon his brow and sadly exclaim, "Memory! memory! where art thou
gone?"

But this failure altogether was so gradual, and at the same time so
complete, that I am inclined to hope and believe there was not on the
whole much painful consciousness of it; and certainly for more than a
year preceding his death, he passed his time as in a dream, with little,
if any knowledge of what went on around him.

One circumstance connected with the latter years of his life deserves to
be noticed as very singular. His hair, which previously was almost snowy
white, grew perceptibly darker, and I think, if any thing, increased in
thickness and a disposition to curl.

But it is time I drew a vail over these latter scenes. They are too
painful to dwell on.

"A noble mind in sad decay,
When baffled hope has died away,
And life becomes one long distress
In pitiable helplessness.
Methinks 'tis like a ship on shore,
That once defied the Atlantic's roar,
And gallantly through gale and storm
Hath ventured her majestic form;
But now in stranded ruin laid,
By winds and dashing seas decayed,
Forgetful of her ocean reign,
Must crumble into earth again."[7]

In some cases of this kind, toward the end, some glimmering of reason
re-appears, but this must be when the mind is obscured or upset,