ial colleges, all admitted as members of learned
bodies, and all licentiates of law and physic. This would particularly
suit the condition of Ireland, where property is a most inadequate
and limited test, and at the same time, by an infusion of educated and
thinking men into the mass, serve to counterbalance and even guide the
opinions of those less capable of forming judgments. We are becoming
more democratic every day. Let our trust be in well-informed,
clearsighted democracy, and let the transition be from the aristocracy
to the cultivated middle classes, and not to the rule of Feargus
O'Connor and his Chartists.

And now, to wander down this lonely glen, and forget, if I may, these
jarring questions, where men's passions and ambitions have more at stake
than human happiness. Do what I will, think of what I will, the image
of--Caroline Graham--yes, I must call her so, rises before me at
every step. It is a sad condition of the nervous system when slight
impressions cut deep. Like the diseased state of the mucous membrane,
when tastes and odours cling and adhere to it for days long, I suppose
that the prevalence of such images in the brain would at last lead to
insanity, or, at least, that form of it called Monomania. Let no man
suppose that this is so very rare a malady. Let us rather ask, Who is
quite free from some feature of the affection? The mild cases are the
passionate ardour we see exhibited by men in the various and peculiar
pursuits in life; the bad ones, only greater in degree, are shut up in
asylums.

The most singular instance that ever occurred within my own knowledge
was one I met several years back in Germany; and as "thereby hangs a
tale," I will set it down in the words of the relator. This is his own
recital--in his own handwriting too!

There are moments in the life of almost every man which seem like years.
The mind, suddenly calling up the memory of bygone days, lives over
the early hours of childhood--the bright visions of youth, when all was
promise and anticipation--and traverses with a bound the ripe years of
manhood, with all their struggles, and cares, and disappointments; and
even throws a glance into the dark vista of the future, computing the
"to come" from the past; and, at such times as these, one feels that he
is already old, and that years have gone over him.

Such were to me the few brief moments in which I stood upon the Meissner
hill that overhangs my native city. Dresden, th