nent aberration of reason than were Sir Humphry Davy's
visionary ecstasies under the influence of the gas. The difference
between the two states of suspension is that of time, and it is but an
affair of time with our beloved patient. Yet prepare yourself. I fear
that the mind will not recover without some critical malady of the
body!"

"Critical! but not dangerous?--say not dangerous! I can endure the pause
of her reason; I could not endure the void in the universe if her life
were to fade from the earth."

"Poor friend! would not you yourself rather lose life than reason?"

"I--yes! But we men are taught to set cheap value on our own lives; we
do not estimate at the same rate the lives of those we love. Did we do
so, Humanity would lose its virtues."

"What, then! Love teaches that there is something of nobler value than
mere mind? Yet surely it cannot be the mere body? What is it, if
not that continuance of being which your philosophy declines to
acknowledge,--namely, soul? If you fear so painfully that your Lilian
should die, is it not that you fear to lose her forever?"

"Oh, cease, cease!" I cried impatiently. "I cannot now argue on
metaphysics. What is it that you anticipate of harm to her life? Her
health has been stronger ever since her affliction. She never seems to
know ailment now. Do you not perceive that her cheek has a more hardy
bloom, her frame a more rounded symmetry, than when you saw her in
England?"

"Unquestionably. Her physical forces have been silently recruiting
themselves in the dreams which half lull, half amuse her imagination.
Imagination! that faculty, the most glorious which is bestowed on the
human mind, because it is the faculty which enables thought to create,
is of all others the most exhausting to life when unduly stimulated and
consciously reasoning on its own creations. I think it probable that
had this sorrow not befallen you, you would have known a sorrow yet
graver,--you would have long survived your Lilian. As it is now, when
she recovers, her whole organization, physical and mental, will have
undergone a beneficent change. But, I repeat my prediction,--some severe
malady of the body will precede the restoration of the mind; and it
is my hope that the present suspense or aberration of the more wearing
powers of the mind may fit the body to endure and surmount the physical
crisis. I remember a case, within my own professional experience,
in many respects similar to this, bu