he matter at so great a price;
but those familiar with the "Letters of Charles Lamb" must know that
Lamb, himself, underwent treatment for mental disease. In a letter to
Coleridge, dated June 10th, 1796, he says: "At some future time I will
amuse you with an account, as full as my memory will permit, of the
strange turns my frenzy took. I look back upon it at times with a
gloomy kind of envy; for, while it lasted, I had many, many hours of
pure happiness. Dream not, Coleridge, of having tasted all the grandeur
and wildness of Fancy till you have gone mad! All now seems to me
vapid, comparatively so!"

As for me, the very first night vast but vague humanitarian projects
began joyously to shape themselves in my mind. My garden of thoughts
seemed filled with flowers which might properly be likened to the
quick-blowing night-blooming cereus--that Delusion of Grandeur of all
flowering plants that thinks itself prodigal enough if it but unmask
its beauty to the moon! Few of my bold fancies, however, were of so
fugitive and chaste a splendor.

The religious instinct is found in primitive man. It is not strange,
therefore, that at this time the religious side of my nature was the
first to display compelling activity. Whether or not this was due to my
rescue from a living death, and my immediate appreciation of God's
goodness, both to me and to those faithful relatives who had done all
the praying during the preceding two years--this I cannot say. But the
fact stands out, that, whereas I had, while depressed, attached a
sinister significance to everything done or said in my presence, I now
interpreted the most trifling incidents as messages from God. The day
after this transition I attended church. It was the first service in
over two years which I had not attended against my will. The reading of
a psalm--the 45th--made a lasting impression upon me, and the
interpretation which I placed upon it furnishes the key to my attitude
during the first weeks of elation. It seemed to me a direct message
from Heaven.

The minister began: "My heart is inditing a good matter: I speak of the
things which I have made touching the king: my tongue is the pen of a
ready writer."--Whose heart but mine? And the things indited--what were
they but the humanitarian projects which had blossomed in my garden of
thoughts over night? When, a few days later, I found myself writing
very long letters with unwonted facility, I became convinced that my
ton