of our readers; and while they peruse it with the saddened
impression that his intellect and genius poured out their latest
treasures in its composition, they will search through it in vain
for the slightest evidence of feebleness or decaying power. Rather
let us anticipate the general verdict that will be pronounced upon
it, and speak of it as one of the ablest of all his writings. But
he wrought at it too eagerly. Hours after midnight the light was
seen to glimmer through the window of that room which within the
same eventful week was to witness the close of the volume, and the
close of the writer's life. This over-working of the brain began to
tell upon his mental health. He had always been somewhat moodily
apprehensive of being attacked by footpads, and had carried loaded
firearms about his person. Latterly, having occasion sometimes to
return to Portobello from Edinburgh at unseasonable hours, he had
furnished himself with a revolver. But now, to all his old fears as
to attacks upon his person, there was added an exciting and
over-mastering impression that his house, and especially that
Museum, the fruit of so much care, which was contained in a
separate outer building, were exposed to the assault of burglars.
He read all the recent stories of house robberies. He believed that
one night, lately, an actual attempt to break in upon his Museum
had been made. Visions of ticket-of-leave men, prowling about his
premises, haunted him by day and by night. The revolver, which lay
nightly near him, was not enough; a broad-bladed dagger was kept
beside it; whilst behind him, at his bed head, a claymore stood
ready at hand. A week or so ago, a new and more aggravated feature
of cerebral disorder showed itself in sudden and singular
sensations in his head. They came only after lengthened intervals.
They did not last long, but were intensely violent. The terrible
idea that his brain was deeply and hopelessly diseased,--that his
mind was on the verge of ruin,--took hold of him, and stood out
before his eye in all that appalling magnitude in which such an
imagination as his alone could picture it. It was mostly at night
that these wild paroxysms of the brain visited him; but up till
last Monday he had spoken of them to no one. A friend who had a
long conve