rism--indeed we are told that he grew ashamed of having written
the book which inoculated the younger minds of Europe with that
miserable disease. In our own time an illustrious poet has given in
"Maud" a very perfect study of a young mind in a morbid condition, a
mind having indeed the student-temper, but of a bad kind, that which
comes not from the genuine love of study, but from sulky rage against
the world.

"Thanks, for the fiend best knows whether woman or man be the worse.
_I will bury myself in my books_, and the Devil may pipe to his own."

This kind of self-burial in one's library does not come from the love of
literature. The recluse will not speak to his neighbor, yet needs human
intercourse of some kind, and seeks it in reading, urged by an inward
necessity. He feels no gratitude towards the winners of knowledge; his
morbid ill-nature depreciates the intellectual laborers:--

"The man of science himself is fonder of glory and vain;
An eye well-practised in nature, a spirit bounded and poor."

What is the life such a spirit will choose for itself? Despising alike
the ignorant and the learned, the acuteness of the cultivated and the
simplicity of the poor, in what form of activity or inaction will he
seek what all men need, the harmony of a life well tuned?

"Be mine a philosopher's life in the quiet woodland ways:
Where, if I cannot be gay, let a passionless peace be my lot."

There are many different morbid states of the mind, and this of the hero
of "Maud" is only one of them, but it is the commonest amongst
intellectual or semi-intellectual young men. See how he has a little fit
of momentary enthusiasm (all he is capable of) about a shell that
suddenly and accidentally attracts his attention. How true to the morbid
nature is that incident! Unable to pursue any large and systematic
observation, the diseased mind is attracted to things suddenly and
accidentally, sees them out of all proportion, and then falls into the
inevitable fit of scornful peevishness.

"What is it? A learned man
Could give it a clumsy name:
Let him name it who can."

The question which concerns the world is, how this condition of the mind
may be avoided. The cure Mr. Tennyson suggested was war; but wars,
though more frequent than is desirable, are not to be had always. And in
your case, my friend, it is happily not a cure but a preventive that is
needed. Let me recommend certain precautions which taken