It was not till several days after his restoration to reason that I ventured to enter into any thing like detailed conversation with him, or to make particular allusions to his late illness; and on this occasion it was that he related to me his rencounter with the fearful object which had overturned his reasonadding, with intense feeling, that not ten thousand a-year should induce him to live in the same chambers any more.

During the course of his progress towards complete recovery, memory shot its strengthening_rays further and further back into the inspissated gloom in which the long interval of insanity had shrouded his mind; but it was too dense-too "palpable an obscure"-to be ever completely and thoroughly illuminated. The rays of recollection, however, settled distinctly on some of the more prominent points; and I was several times astonished by his sudden reference to things which he had said and done, during the "depth of his disorder." He asked me once, for instance, whether he had not made an attempt on his life, and with a razor, and how it was that he did not succeed. He had no recollection, however, of his long and deadly struggle with his keeper-at least he never made the slightest allusion to it, nor of course did any one else.

"I don't much mind talking these horrid things over with you, doctor-for you know all the ins and outs of the whole affair; but if any of my friends or relatives presume to torture me with any allusions or inquiries of this sort-I'll fight them! they'll drive me mad again!" The reader may suppose the hint was not disregarded. All recovered maniacs have a dread-an absolute horror-of any reference being made to their madness, or any thing they have said or done during the course of it: and is it not easily accounted for?

"Did the horrible spectre which occasioned your illness, in the first instance, ever present itself to you

afterward?" I once inquired. He paused and turned pale. Presently he replied, with considerable agitation-"Yes, yes-it scarcely ever left me. It has not always preserved its spectral consistency, but has entered into the most astounding-the most preposterous combinations conceivable, with other objects and scenes-all of them, however, more or less of a distressing or fearful character-many of them terrific!" I begged him, if it were not unpleasant to him, to give me a specimen of them.

"It is certainly far from gratifying to trace scenes of such shame and horror-but I will comply as far as I am able," said he, rather gloomily. "Once I saw him," meaning the spectre, "leading on an army of huge speckled and crested serpents against me; and when they came upon me-for I had no power to run away-I suddenly found myself in the midst of a pool of stagnant water, absolutely alive with slimy shapeless reptiles; and while endeavouring to make my way out, he rose to the surface, his face hissing in the water, and blazing bright as ever! Again, I thought I saw him in single combat, by the gates of Eden, with Satan-and the air thronged and heated with swart faces looking on!" This was unquestionably some dim confused recollection of the Milton-readings, in the earlier part of his illness.

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Again, I thought I was in the act of opening my snuff-box, when he issued from it, diminutive at first in size-but swelling soon into gigantic proportions, and his fiery features diffusing a light and heat around, that absolutely scorched and blasted! At another time I thought I was gazing upwards on a sultry summer sky-and in the midst of a luminous fissure in it, made by the lightning-I distinguished his accursed figure, with his glowing features wearing an expression of horror, and his limbs outstretched, as if he had been hurled down from some height or other, and was falling through the sky towards me. He came he came-flung himself into

my recoiling arms-and clung to me-burning, scorching, withering my soul within me! I thought further, that I was all the while the subject of strange, paradoxical, contradictory feelings towards him ;that I at one and the same time loved and loathedfeared and despised him!" He mentioned several other instances of the confusions in his "chamber of imagery." I told him of his sudden exclamation concerning Mr. T's burial, and its singular corroboration; but he either did not, or affected not to recollect any thing about it. He told me he had a full and distinct recollection of being for a long time possessed with the notion of making himself a “sacrifice" of some sort or other, and that he was seduced or goaded on to do so by the spectre, in the most dazzling temptations-and under the most appalling threats-one of which latter was, that God would plunge him into hell for ever, if he did not offer up himself;-that if he did so, he should be a sublime spectacle to the universe," &c. &c. &c.

"Do you recollect of dictating a novel or a romance?" He started as if struck with some sudden recollection. "No-but I'll tell you what I recollect well-that the spectre and I were set to copy all the tales and romances that ever had been written, in a large, bold, round hand, and then translate them into Greek or Latin verse!" He smiled, nay, even laughed at the thought, almost the first time of his giving way to such emotions since his recovery. He added, that as to the latter, the idea of the utter hopelessness of ever getting through such a stupendous undertaking never once presented itself to him, and that he should have gone on with it, but that he lost his inkstand!!

"Had you ever a clear and distinct idea that you had lost the right use of reason?"

"Why, about that, to tell the truth, I've been puzzling myself a good deal, and yet I cannot say any thing decisive. I do fancy that at times I had short,

transient glimpses into the real state of things, but they were so evanescent. I am conscious of feeling at these times incessant fury arising from a sense of personal constraint, and I longed once to strangle some one who was giving me medicine."

But one of the most singular of all is yet to come. He still persisted then, after his complete recovery as we supposed, in avowing his belief that we had hired a huge boa serpent from Exeter 'Change, to come and keep constant watch over him, to constrain his movements when he threatened to become violent; that it lay constantly coiled up under his bed for that purpose; that he could now and then feel the motions-the writhing undulating motions of its coils-hear it utter a sort of sigh, and see it often elevate its head over the bed, and play with its soft, slippery, delicate forked tongue over his face, to soothe him to sleep. When poor M——, with a serious, sober, earnest air, assured me he STILL believed all this, my hopes of his complete and final restoration to sanity were dashed at once! How such an absurd-in short I have no terms in which I may adequately characterize it-how, I say, such an idea could possibly be persisted in I was bewildered in attempting to conceive. I frequently strove to reason him out of it, but in vain. To no purpose did I burlesque and caricature the notion almost beyond all bounds; it was useless to remind him of the blank impossibility of it; he regarded me with such a face as I should exhibit to a fluent personage, quite in earnest in demonstrating to me that the moon was made of green cheese.

I have once before heard of a patient who, after recovering from an attack of insanity, retained one solitary crotchet - one little stain or speck of lunacy -about which, and which alone, he was mad to the end of his life. I supposed such to be the case with M. It was possible-barely so, I thought-that he might entertain his preposterous notion about the

boa, and yet be sound in the general texture of his mind. I prayed God it might; I "hoped against hope." The last evening I ever spent with him was occupied with my endeavouring, once for all, to disabuse him of the idea in question; and in the course of our conversation he disclosed one or two other little symptoms-specks of lunacy—which made me leave him filled with disheartening doubts as to the probability of a permanent recovery.

My worst fears were awfully realized. In about five years from the period above alluded to, Mwho had got married, and had enjoyed excellent general health, was spending the summer with his family at Brussels-and one night destroyed himself-alas, alas! destroyed himself in a manner too horrible to mention'!

CHAPTER VIII.

The Martyr-Philosopher.

It has been my lot to witness many dreadful deathbeds. I am not overstating the truth, when I assert that nearly eight out of every ten that have come under my personal observation-of course excluding children-have more or less partaken of this character. I know only one way of accounting for it, and some may accuse me of cant for adverting to it -men will not LIVE as if they were to die. They are content to let that event come upon them "like a thief in the night."* They grapple with their final

* One of my patients, whom a long course of profligacy had brought to a painful and premature death-bed, once quoted this striking and scriptural expression when within less than an hour of his end, and with a thrill of horror.