sturbances of the nervous
system as a consequence of the war excitement in non-combatants. Take
the first trifling example which comes to our recollection. A sad
disaster to the Federal army was told the other day in the presence of
two gentlemen and a lady. Both the gentlemen complained of a sudden
feeling at the _epigastrium_, or, less learnedly, the pit of the
stomach, changed color, and confessed to a slight tremor about the
knees. The lady had a _"grande revolution_," as French patients
say,--went home, and kept her bed for the rest of the day. Perhaps the
reader may smile at the mention of such trivial indispositions, but in
more sensitive natures death itself follows in some cases from no more
serious cause. An old gentleman fell senseless in fatal apoplexy, on
hearing of Napoleon's return from Elba. One of our early friends, who
recently died of the same complaint, was thought to have had his attack
mainly in consequence of the excitements of the time.

We all know what the _war fever_ is in our young men,--what a devouring
passion it becomes in those whom it assails. Patriotism is the fire
of it, no doubt, but this is fed with fuel of all sorts. The love of
adventure, the contagion of example, the fear of losing the chance of
participating in the great events of the time, the desire of personal
distinction, all help to produce those singular transformations which
we often witness, turning the most peaceful of our youth into the most
ardent of our soldiers. But something of the same fever in a different
form reaches a good many non-combatants, who have no thought of losing a
drop of precious blood belonging to themselves or their families. Some
of the symptoms we shall mention are almost universal; they are as plain
in the people we meet everywhere as the marks of an influenza, when that
is prevailing.

The first is a nervous restlessness of a very peculiar character. Men
cannot think, or write, or attend to their ordinary business. They
stroll up and down the streets, they saunter out upon the public places.
We confessed to an illustrious author that we laid down the volume
of his work which we were reading when the war broke out. It was as
interesting as a romance, but the romance of the past grew pale before
the red light of the terrible present. Meeting the same author not long
afterwards, he confessed that he had laid down his pen at the same time
that we had closed his book. He could not write about the s