brains out. And why does he do this? It is
not, as would once have been the case, because
he is in pecuniary difficulties, or that he dreads
some threatening exposure. It is because—
and here is the modern peculiarity of the thing
—the man is so desperately perplexed, his ideas
are so involved and knotted and tangled together,
that he can bear it no longer, and so he cuts
the knot and gets away.

Upon men of a different temperament, troubles
of the same sort will have a different effect.
No need for them to accelerate the end with
their own violent hands. It comes to them of
itself. " So-and-so is in a very bad way,"
his friends say. " He complains very much; his
work is intolerable to him; he is evidently
incapable of enjoyment of any kind, social or
otherwise; his spirits are wretched; what can
be the matter with him?" The matter is, that
he is dying. He is dying slowly, by inches.
Dying because he has tried to keep up with the
pace at which his competitors run, and he has
not been able. It is the strain, the anxiety,
the excitement that kills, even more than the
mere labour. The fate of this man and of the
other is told in a word; but what words can
describe the agony that each of them has
endured in the years, and months, and days
which have preceded and ushered in the end?
What sort of a time was that, when the suffering
wretch first began to feel the approach of
what was to follow? A general loss of perception,
perhaps, would be one of his first symptoms,
the images of things not biting so
distinctly on his faculties as before; his ideas less
clear, less numerous, his sensibilities less acute.
And this combined incongruously enough with
an excessive irritability and intolerance of
external sources of annoyance, so that little daily
troubles, which in a healthy condition would
not have distressed him, become now terrible
sources of discomfort, while small responsibilities
weigh upon him intolerably, with a bug-
bear terror in their aspect which their intrinsic
importance in no way justifies. And then his
memory begins to play him tricks. He is
unable to keep his engagements in mind; he
carries a letter in his pocket which should have
been in the post three days ago; he has some
circumstance to relate, or some story to tell,
and is brought up suddenly by finding that
some important incident connected with the
statement, some name, some date, some number,
is gone.

This man's condition is in all respects
incongruous. He is restless, though tired; and though
he yearns for quiet, he is yet, when he obtains it,
unable to face its concomitant dulness. Heaven
help such an one! His is a sad case, but by no
means an uncommon one. And it is not mere
work that has reduced this man to so desperate
a condition. Nine times out of ten it will be
found that he has been engaged in some branch
of labour which had made great demands upon
his readiness. He is pledged to do a certain
thing in a certain time. To be ready with
certain results by a particular hour. He is a
man engaged in scientific pursuits, and every
day his meteorological predictions must be
ready. Or maybe he has to provide amusement
for the public, and must be funny every week
to order. This is the kind of work that kills.
Or, if it does not kill a man at once, it knocks
him up, reduces him into what is called " a low
bad state"—a state which consigns bun to the
hands of the physician—an invalided state, to
last, more or less, always. Then is he bidden—
though there are mouths to be filled which can
only be filled by his professional exertions—to
leave off. He must abandon work for a time;
and though this may mean abandoning income
too, he is strictly forbidden to be anxious, or to
have " anything on his mind."

But supposing an invalid to be able to
discontinue his work for a time; supposing that
he seeks relaxation by travelling, and in some
sort finds it; how often it happens that the
improvement which takes place in his condition
turns out to be temporary. While he makes
holiday, while he runs away from his cares and
responsibilities, he does better; but when he
returns to these, as he must do, sooner or later,
does he not often find that the old symptoms
gradually reappear, and do not his friends hear,
after a while, that " So-and-so is in a bad way
again"?

Nor do the better classes, as they are called,
stand alone in feeling the strain which is
encountered by those who take part in such forms
of labour as may be called specialities of the
day. My respected father remembers, perhaps,
the case of a certain signal-man at one of our
most frequented junctions, whose duties were
so manifold and bewildering, and involved such
intricate calculations of time and place—a half
second wrong here, or a half inch wrong there,
being sure to bring about the most dreadful
consequences—that the man at last fell into a
morbid condition about his work, and, being
strained and bewildered to a degree far beyond
his powers of endurance, remarked at last, with
terrible calmness to one of his comrades, " He
knew the day would come when he must make
a mistake, and that when that day came he
should most surely be killed"? This is quite a
modern instance, and is no doubt fresh in your
memory, as is also the end of the poor wretch
who did at last make a mistake, and was at last
killed.

Does not every one know of similar instances?

But what does all this come to? Are we to
give up the " glorious gains" of modern times?
Are we to cut down our telegraph-posts and
coil away the magic wires? Are we to pull up
the rails upon the iron-road, and make a "turnpike"
of it again? Shall we send our
merchandise by the road-waggon and the barge,
and our letters by the old mail-coach? Such
questions are ridiculous. There is no going
back in this world; no standing still even, with
impunity.

The fact is, that these painful results of
modern practices are in some sort inevitable. In
every age the weak have gone to the wall.