e entertaining and original, are
also by their nature intermittent. They hold a man but for a season. He
may have one a year or every two years; and though, while he is in the
heat of any new discovery, he will let you hear of nothing else, he
varies from himself, and is amusing undesignedly. He is not like the
chimes at midnight.

People of the character here spoken of, that is, who tease you to death
with some one idea, generally differ in their favourite notion from the
rest of the world; and indeed it is the love of distinction which is
mostly at the bottom of this peculiarity. Thus one person is remarkable
for living on a vegetable diet, and never fails to entertain you
all dinner-time with an invective against animal food. One of this
self-denying class, who adds to the primitive simplicity of this sort of
food the recommendation of having it in a raw state, lamenting the death
of a patient whom he had augured to be in a good way as a convert to his
system, at last accounted for his disappointment in a whisper--'But she
ate meat privately, depend upon it.' It is not pleasant, though it is
what one submits to willingly from some people, to be asked every time
you meet, whether you have quite left off drinking wine, and to be
complimented or condoled with on your looks according as you answer in
the negative or affirmative. Abernethy thinks his pill an infallible
cure for all disorders. A person once complaining to his physician that
he thought his mode of treatment had not answered, he assured him it was
the best in the world,--'and as a proof of it,' says he, 'I have had one
gentleman, a patient with your disorder, under the same regimen for the
last sixteen years!'--l have known persons whose minds were entirely
taken up at all times and on all occasions with such questions as
the Abolition of the Slave Trade, the Restoration of the Jews, or the
progress of Unitarianism. I myself at one period took a pretty strong
turn to inveighing against the doctrine of Divine Right, and am not yet
cured of my prejudice on that subject. How many projectors have gone mad
in good earnest from incessantly harping on one idea: the discovery of
the philosopher's stone, the finding out the longitude, or paying off
the national debt! The disorder at length comes to a fatal crisis;
but long before this, and while they were walking about and talking as
usual, the derangement of the fancy, the loss of all voluntary power to
control or a