eir
way into your head, tainting your own opinions, and mingling
themselves with your matured convictions. Believe me, there
is nothing but a strict quarantine can prevail against
error!"

Enough of these,--now for an incremation: would that, Hindoo
like, I could consume with them the memory to which they
have been wedded!

*****

Dr. H------ has been here again; he came in just as the last flicker was
expiring over the charred leaves; he guessed readily what had been my
occupation, and seemed to feel relieved that the sad office of telling
bad tidings of my case was taken off his hands. Symptoms seem now
crowding on each other--they come, like detached battalions meeting on
the field of battle when victory is won, only to shew themselves and
to proclaim how hopeless would be resistance. The course of the malady
would, latterly, appear to have been rapid, and yet how reluctant does
the spirit seem to quit its ruined temple!

I wish that I had more command over my faculties; the tricks Imagination
plays me at each moment are very painful: scarcely have I composed my
mind into a calm and patient frame, than Fancy sets to work at some
vision of returning health and strength--of home scenes and familiar
faces--of the green lanes of Old England, as seen at sunset of a summer
eve, when the last song of the blackbird rings through the clear air,
and odours of sweet flowers grow stronger in the heavy atmosphere.

To start from these, and think of what I am--of what so soon I shall be!

What marvellously fine aspirations and noble enterprises cross the
sick man's fancy! The climate of health is sadly unfavourable to the
creatures begot of fancy--one tithe of the strange notions that are now
warring in my distracted brain would make matter for a whole novelist's
library. Thoughts that are thus engendered are like the wines which the
Germans call "Ausgelesene," and which, falling from the grape unpressed,
have none of the impurities of fabrication about them. After all, the
things that have been left undone by all of us in this life, would be
far better and greater than those we have done.

Oh, the fond hearts that have never been smitten,
And all the hot tears that have never been shed!
Not to speak of the books that have never been written;
And all the smart things that have never been said!

*****

Weaker and weaker!--the senses fail to retain impressions, and,