“I have no fear of offending you now, since we shall never
meet again. The very thought that the whole world divides
us, as completely as death itself, will make you accept my
words less as reproof than warning. Once more, then, abandon
the career for which you have not health, nor energy, nor
enduring strength. Brilliant displays, discursive efforts,
however effective, will no more constitute statesmanship
than fireworks suffice to light up the streets of a city.
Like all men of quick intelligence, you undervalue those who
advance more slowly, forgetting that their gleaning is more
cleanly made, and that, while you come sooner, they come
more heavily laden. Again, this waiting for conviction—this
habit of listening to the arguments on each side, however
excellent in general life, is inapplicable in politics. You
must have opinions previously formed—you must have your
mind made up, on principles very different and much wider
than those a debate embraces. If I find the person who
guides me through the streets of a strange city stop to
inquire here, to ask this, to investigate that, and so on, I
at once conceive—and very reasonably—a doubt of his skill
and intelligence; but if he advance with a certain air of
assured knowledge, I yield myself to his guidance with
implicit trust: nor does it matter so much, when we have
reached the desired goal, that we made a slight divergence
from the shortest road.
“Now, if a constituency concede much to your judgment,
remember that you owe a similar debt to the leader of your
party, who certainly—all consideration of ability apart—
sees further, because from a higher eminence, than other
men.
“Again, you take no pleasure in any pursuit wherein no
obstacle presents itself; and yet, if the difficulty be one
involving a really strong effort, you abandon it. You
require as many conditions to your liking as did the
commander at Walcheren—the wind must not only blow from a
particular quarter, but with a certain degree of violence.
This will never do! The favouring gale that leads to
fortune is as often a hurricane as a zephyr; some are blown
into the haven half shipwrecked, but still safe.
“Lastly, you have a failing, for which neither ability, nor
address, nor labour, nor even good luck, can compensate. You
trust every one—not from any implicit reliance on the
goodness of human nature—not that you think well of this
man, or highly of that, but simply from indolence.
‘Believing,’ is so very easy—such a rare self-indulgence!
Think of all the deception this has cost you—think of the
fallacies, which you knew to be fallacies, that found their
way into your head, tainting your own opinions, and mingling
themselves with your matured convictions. Believe me, there
is nothing but a strict quarantine can prevail against
error!”
Enough of these,—now for an incremation: would that, Hindoo
like, I could consume with them the memory to which they
have been wedded!
Dr. H——— has been here again; he came in just as the last flicker was expiring over the charred leaves; he guessed readily what had been my occupation, and seemed to feel relieved that the sad office of telling bad tidings of my case was taken off his hands. Symptoms seem now crowding on each other—they come, like detached battalions meeting on the field of battle when victory is won, only to shew themselves and to proclaim how hopeless would be resistance. The course of the malady would, latterly, appear to have been rapid, and yet how reluctant does the spirit seem to quit its ruined temple!
I wish that I had more command over my faculties; the tricks Imagination plays me at each moment are very painful: scarcely have I composed my mind into a calm and patient frame, than Fancy sets to work at some vision of returning health and strength—of home scenes and familiar faces—of the green lanes of Old England, as seen at sunset of a summer eve, when the last song of the blackbird rings through the clear air, and odours of sweet flowers grow stronger in the heavy atmosphere.
To start from these, and think of what I am—of what so soon I shall be!
What marvellously fine aspirations and noble enterprises cross the sick man’s fancy! The climate of health is sadly unfavourable to the creatures begot of fancy—one tithe of the strange notions that are now warring in my distracted brain would make matter for a whole novelist’s library. Thoughts that are thus engendered are like the wines which the Germans call “Ausgelesene,” and which, falling from the grape unpressed, have none of the impurities of fabrication about them. After all, the things that have been left undone by all of us in this life, would be far better and greater than those we have done.
Oh, the fond hearts that have never been smitten,
And all the hot tears that have never been shed!
Not to speak of the books that have never been written;
And all the smart things that have never been said!
Weaker and weaker!—the senses fail to retain impressions, and, like cracked vases, let their contents ooze out by slow degrees. Objects of sight become commingled with those of sound; and I can half understand the blind man Locke tells us of, who imagined “the colour scarlet to be like the sound of a trumpet.”
Mesmerism affects the power of transferring the operations of one sense to the organs of another; can it be that, in certain states of the brain, the nervous fluids become intermixed?