year had scarcely passed since my fatal wedding
day, before I had formed a resolution to quit
L——, and abandon my profession: and my
resolution was confirmed, and my goal determined,
by a letter I received from Julius Faber.

I had written at length to him, not many days
after the blow that had fallen on me, stating all
circumstances as calmly and clearly as my grief
would allow, for I held his skill at a higher estimate
than that of any living brother of my art,
and I was not without hope in the efficacy of his
advice. The letter I now received from him had
been begun, and continued at some length, before
my communication reached him. And this
earlier portion contained animated and cheerful
descriptions of his Australian life and home,
which contrasted with the sorrowful tone of the
supplement written in reply to the tidings with
which I had wrung his friendly and tender heart.
In this, the latter, part of his letter, 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 characterised 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 course 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 course of travel I
recommend and the prescriptions I conjoin with
that course fail you, let me know; and though
I would fain close my days in this land, I will
come to you. I love you as my son. I will tend
your wife as my daughter."

Foreign travel! The idea smiled on me.
Julius Faber's companionship, sympathy, matchless
skill! The very thought seemed as a raft
to a drowning mariner. I now read more attentively
the earlier portions of his letter. They described,
in glowing colours, the wondrous country
in which he had fixed his home; the joyous
elasticity of its atmosphere; the freshness of its
primitive pastoral life; the strangeness of its
scenery, with a Flora and a Fauna which have
no similitudes in the ransacked quarters of
the Old World. And the strong impulse seized
me to transfer to the solitudes of that blithesome
and hardy Nature a spirit no longer at home in
the civilised haunts of men, and household gods
that shrunk from all social eyes, and would fain
have found a wilderness for the desolate hearth,
on which they had ceased to be sacred if unveiled.
As if to give practical excuse and reason
for the idea that seized me, Julius Faber
mentioned, incidentally, that the house and property
of a wealthy speculator in his immediate
neighbourhood were on sale at a price which seemed to
me alluringly trivial, and, according to his judgment,
far below the value they would soon reach
in the hands of a more patient capitalist. He
wrote at the period of the agricultural panic in
the colony which preceded the discovery of its
earliest gold-fields. But his geological science had
convinced him that strata within and around the
property now for sale were auriferous, and his
intelligence enabled him to predict how inevitably
man would be attracted towards the gold, and how
surely the gold would fertilise the soil and enrich
its owners. He described the house thus to be
sold—in case I might know of a purchaser; it
had been built at a cost unusual in those early
times, and by one who clung to English tastes
amidst Australian wilds, so that in this purchase
a settler would escape the hardships be had then
ordinarily to encounter: it was, in short, a home
to which a man, more luxurious than I, might
bear a bride with wants less simple than those
which now sufficed for my darling Lilian.

This communication dwelt on my mind through
the avocations of the day on which I received it,
and in the evening I read all, except the supple-
ment, aloud to Mrs. Ashleigh in her daughter's
presence. I desired to see if Faber's descriptions
of the country and its life, which in
themselves were extremely spirited and striking,
would arouse Lilian's interest. At first, she did
not seem to heed me while I read, but when I
came to Faber's loving account of little Amy,