etter, he suggested that if time had wrought no material
change for the better, it might be advisable to try the effect of
foreign travel. Scenes entirely new might stimulate observation, and
the observation of things external withdraw the sense from that brooding
over images delusively formed within, which characterized the kind of
mental alienation I had described. "Let any intellect create for itself
a visionary world, and all reasonings built on it are fallacious: the
visionary world vanishes in proportion as we can arouse a predominant
interest in the actual."

This grand authority, who owed half his consummate skill as a
practitioner to the scope of his knowledge as a philosopher, then
proceeded to give me a hope which I had not dared of myself to form. He
said:--

"I distinguish the case you so minutely detail from that insanity which
is reason lost; here it seems rather to be reason held in suspense.
Where there is hereditary predisposition, where there is organic
change of structure in the brain,--nay, where there is that kind of
insanity which takes the epithet of moral, whereby the whole
character becomes so transformed that the prime element of sound
understanding, conscience itself, is either erased or warped into the
sanction of what in a healthful state it would most disapprove,--it is
only charlatans who promise effectual cure. But here I assume that
there is no hereditary taint; here I am convinced, from my own
observation, that the nobility of the organs, all fresh as yet in the
vigour of youth, would rather submit to death than to the permanent
overthrow of their equilibrium in reason; here, where you tell me the
character preserves all its moral attributes of gentleness and purity,
and but over-indulges its own early habit of estranged contemplation;
here, without deceiving you in false kindness, I give you the
guarantee of my experience when I bid you 'hope!' I am persuaded
that, sooner or later, the mind, thus for a time affected, will right
itself; because here, in the cause of the malady, we do but deal with
the nervous system. And that, once righted, and the mind once
disciplined in those practical duties which conjugal life
necessitates, the malady itself will never return; never be
transmitted to the children on whom your wife's restoration to health
may permit you to count hereafter. If the cou