an imaginary bit of conversation between an officer and his friend, was, literally, no caricature :—

A. Ha! captain! how dost? () The appearance would be much improved by a little more attention to the (2) bird.

B. Why, so I think there's no (3) sentimint in a bird. But then it serves to distinguish a soldier, and there is no doubt much military (*) varchue in looking (5) furful.

A. But the girls, Jack, the girls! Why, the mouth is enough to banish kissing from the (6) airth (7) etairnally.

B. In (8) maircy, no more of that! Zounds, but the shopkeepers and the (9) marchants will get the better of us with the dear souls! However, as it is now against military law to have a tender countenance, and as some birds, I thank heaven, are of a tolerable (10) qual-ity, I must make a varchue of necessity; and as I can't look soft for the love of my girl, I must e'en look (1) hijjus for the love of my country.

CHAPTER VIII.

SUFFERING AND REFLECTION.

BUT the gay and confident spirit in which I began this critical career received a check, of which none of my friends suspected the anguish, and very few were told. I fell into a melancholy state of mind, produced by ill-health.

I thought it was owing to living too well; and as I had great faith in temperance, I went to the reverse extreme; not considering that temperance implies moderation in self-denial as well as in self-indulgence. The consequence was a nervous condition, amounting to hypochondria, which lasted me several months. I experienced it twice afterwards, each time more painfully than before, and for a much longer period; but I have never had it since; and I am of opinion that I need not have had it at all had I gone at once to a physician, and not repeated the mistake of being over abstinent.

I mention the whole circumstance for the benefit of others. The first attack came on me with palpitations of the heart. These I got rid of by horseback. I forget what symptoms attended the approach of the second. The third was pro

(') thy; (2) beard; (3) sentiment; (4) virtue; (5) fearful; (®) carth; (eternally; (8) mercy; (9) merchants; (10) quality (with the a as in universality); (") hideous.

duced by sitting out of doors too early in the spring. I attempted to outstarve them all, but egregiously failed. In one instance, I took wholly to a vegetable diet, which made me so weak and giddy, that I was forced to catch hold of rails in the streets to hinder myself from falling. In another, I confined myself for some weeks to a milk diet, which did nothing but jaundice my complexion. In the third, I took a modicum of meat, one glass of wine, no milk except in tea, and no vegetables at all; but though I did not suffer quite so much mental distress from this regimen as from the milk, I suffered more than from the vegetables, and for a much longer period than with either. To be sure, I continued it longer; and, perhaps, it gave me greater powers of endurance; but for upwards of four years, without intermission, and above six years in all, I underwent a burden of wretchedness, which I afterwards felt convinced I need not have endured for as many weeks, perhaps not as many days, had I not absurdly taken to the extreme I spoke of in the first instance, and then as absurdly persisted in seeking no advice, partly from fear of hearing worse things foretold me, and partly from a hope of wearing out the calamity by patience. At no time did my friends guess to what amount I suffered. They saw that my health was bad enough, and they condoled with me accordingly; but cheerful habits enabled me to retain an air of cheerfulness, except when I was alone; and I never spoke of it but once, which was to my friend Mitchell, whom I guessed to have undergone something of the kind.

And what was it that I suffered? and on what account? On no account. On none whatsoever, except my ridiculous super-abstinence, and my equally ridiculous avoidance of speaking about it. The very fact of having no cause whatsoever, was the thing that most frightened me. I thought that if I had but a cause, the cause might have been removed or palliated; but to be haunted by a ghost which was not even ghostly, which was something I never saw, or could even imagine, this, I thought, was the most terrible thing that could befall me. I could see no end to the persecutions of an enemy, who was neither visible nor even existing! Causes for suffering, however, came. Not, indeed, the

worst, for I was neither culpable nor superstitious. I had wronged nobody; and I now felt the inestimable benefit of having had cheerful opinions given me in religion. But I plagued myself with things which are the pastimes of better states of health, and the pursuits of philosophers. I mooted with myself every point of metaphysics that could get into a head into which they had never been put. I made a cause of causes for anxiety, by inquiring into causation, and outdid the Vicar of Wakefield's Moses, in being my own Sanchoniathan and Berosus on the subject of the cosmogony! I jest about it now; but oh! what pain was it to me then! and what pangs of biliary will and impossibility I underwent in the endeavour to solve these riddles of the universe! I felt, long before I knew Mr. Wordsworth's poetry,

"the burthen and the mystery

Of all this unintelligible world."

I reverence the mystery still, but I no longer feel the burden, because for these five-and-thirty years I have known how to adjust my shoulders to it by taking care of my health. I should rather say because healthy shoulders have no such burden to carry. The elements of existence, like the air which we breathe, and which would otherwise crush us, are so nicely proportioned to one another within and around them, that we are unconsciously sustained by them, not thoughtfully oppressed.

One great benefit, however, resulted to me from this suffering. It gave me an amount of reflection, such as in all probability I never should have had without it; and if readers have derived any good from the graver portion of my writings, I attribute it to this experience of evil. It taught me patience; it taught me charity (however imperfectly I may have exercised either); it taught me charity even towards myself; it taught me the worth of little pleasures, as well as the dignity and utility of great pains; it taught me that evil itself contained good; nay, it taught me to doubt whether any such thing as evil, considered in itself, existed; whether things altogether, as far as our planet knows them, could have been so good without it; whether the desire, nevertheless, which nature has implanted in us for its destruction, be not the signal

and the means to that end; and whether its destruction, finally, will not prove its existence, in the meantime, to have been necessary to the very bliss that supersedes it.

I have been thus circumstantial respecting this illness, or series of illnesses, in the hope that such readers as have not had experience or reflection enough of their own to dispense with the lesson, may draw the following conclusions from sufferings of all kinds, if they happen to need it :—

First, That however any suffering may seem to be purely mental, body alone may occasion it; which was undoubtedly the case in my instance.

Second, That as human beings do not originate their own bodies or minds, and as yet very imperfectly know how to manage them, they have a right to all the aid or comfort they can procure, under any sufferings whatsoever.

Third, That whether it be the mind or body that is ailing, or both, they may save themselves a world of perplexity and of illness by going at once to a physician.

Fourth, That till they do so, or in case they are unable to do it, a recourse to the first principles of health is their only wise proceeding; by which principles I understand air and exercise, bathing, amusements, and whatsoever else tends to enliven and purify the blood.

Fifth, That the blackest day may have a bright morrow; for my last and worst illness suddenly left me, probably in consequence of the removal, though unconsciously, of some internal obstruction; and it is now for the long period above mentioned that I have not had the slightest return of it, though I have had many anxieties to endure, and a great deal of sick

ness.

Sixth, That the far greater portion of a life thus tried may nevertheless be remarkable for cheerfulness; which has been the case with my own.

Seventh, That the value of cheerful opinions is inestimable; that they will retain a sort of heaven round a man, when everything else might fail him; and that, consequently, they ought to be religiously inculcated in children.

Eighth and last,-That evil itself has its bright, or at any rate its redeeming, side; probably is but the fugitive requisite

of some everlasting good; and assuredly, in the meantime, and in a thousand obvious instances, is the admonisher, the producer, the increaser, nay, the very adorner and splendid investitor of good; it is the pain that prevents a worse, the storm that diffuses health, the plague that enlarges cities, the fatigue that sweetens sleep, the discord that enriches harmonies, the calamity that tests affections, the victory and the crown of patience, the enrapturer of the embraces of joy.

I was reminded of the circumstance which gave rise to these reflections, by the mention of the friend of whom I spoke last, and another brother of whom I went to see during my first illness. He was a young and amiable artist, residing at Gainsborough in Lincolnshire. He had no conception of what I suffered; and one of his modes of entertaining me was his taking me to a friend of his, a surgeon, to see his anatomical preparations, and delight my hypochondriacal eyes with grinnings of skulls and delicacies of injected hearts. I have no more horror now, on reflection, of those frameworks and machineries of the beautiful body in which we live, than I have of the jacks and wires of a harpsichord. The first sight revolts us simply because life dislikes death, and the human being is jarred out of a sense of its integrity by these bits and scraps of the material portion of it. But I know it is no more me, than it is the feeling which revolts from it, or than the harpsichord itself is the music that Haydn or Beethoven put into it. Indeed, I did not think otherwise at the time, with the healthier part of me; nor did this healthier part ever forsake me. I always attributed what I felt to bodily ailment, and talked as reasonably, and for the most part as cheerfully, with my friends as usual, nor did I ever once gainsay the cheerfulness and hopefulness of my opinions. But I could not look comfortably on the bones and the skulls nevertheless, though I made a point of sustaining the exhibition. I bore anything that came, in order that I might be overborne by nothing; and I found this practice of patience very useful. I also took part in every diversion, and went into as many different places and new scenes as possible; which reminds me that I once rode with my Lincolnshire friend from Gainsborough to Doncaster, and that he and I, sick and serious as I was, or rather