quoted without dissent in one of the
Bethlehem Hospital reports: "In round numbers,
of ten persons attacked by insanity, five
recover, and five die, sooner or later, during
the attack; of the five who recover, not more
than two remain well during the rest of their
lives; the other three sustain subsequent
attacks, during which at least two of them
die. But, although the picture is thus an
unfavourable one, it is very far from justifying
the popular prejudice, that insanity is
virtually an incurable disease; and the view
which it presents is much modified by the
long intervals which often occur between the
attacks, during which intervals of mental
health (in many cases of from ten to twenty
years' duration), an individual has lived in
all the enjoyments of social life."

It may be worthwhile, also, now that we
speak of English insanity, to correct the
common error which ascribes a tendency to
produce insanity and suicide to our November
weather. In England as in France, in
Bethlehem as in the Salpetrière, the greatest
number of insane cases occur in the six
summer months, especially in May, June,
and July. In London, the greatest number
of recoveries occur in November.

MY WINDOW.

I am a very quiet man, fond of idle dreaming,
fond of speculative studies, fond of a
great many things that rarely make headway
in this practical world, but which fitly
furnish forth a life that has been almost blank
of incident,—a life that parted with hope
early—that may, in fact, be said to have lost
the better part of its vitality when Nelly
died.

Nelly was not my wife, but she would
have been if she had lived. I can speak of
her calmly now, but time was when my very
soul sickened for sorrow at her loss; when I
would have rushed with eagerness to the
grave as a door through which I must pass
to behold her dear face again. Sometimes a
spasm of anguish thrills me even yet, when I
recall her image, as she was when she left me
nearly forty years ago; most winning fair,
most beautiful, that image seems, glowing
with innocent youth, palpitating with
tenderness and joy. Then I ask myself, will
she know me? will she love me?—me, worn
old and grey—in that other world, where we
two shall surely meet? Will the bright
spirit-girl recognise the love of her earthly
youth in the man of full three-score years
and ten? Will her countenance—will mine
—be changed and glorified? The angels
cannot be purer than Nelly was: purer or
lovelier. I cannot help thinking of this
reunion. I cannot help speculating whether
she is waiting for me to come to her as
impatiently as I am waiting to depart. In the
dead of the night I have awakened with a
low trembling at my heart, and have been
conscious of a strange presence in the
room, which faded out of it as I listened
breathless for some voice to speak to me—
Nelly's voice to cheer me—when sound there
was none.

When Nelly died, I was a young man. I
had hopes, prospects, interests, even
ambitions in life. But, after that, worldly matters
became irksome to me; and worldly prosperity
failed me. Friends and acquaintances
looked shyly on one who had not elasticity
enough to rise up under the weight of a
crushing sorrow; they turned their backs on
me; I turned my back on them. Henceforth
our ways lay wide apart: theirs, in amongst
the struggle, the toil, the great weariness of
life; mine, by the quiet waters that flow
down peacefully to death. The love of seclusion
has grown upon me as moss grows upon
a rooted stone; I could not wrench myself
away from it, even if I would. Of worldly
pelf I have little, but that little suffices me;
and, although my existence seems selfish—nay,
is so—I lack not interest in my kind. I
catch hold of a slight thread of reality, and
weave it into a tissue of romance. The facts
that I cannot know, imagination supplies me
with; and my own temperament, still and
melancholy, suffuses the story with a tender
twilight hue, which is not great anguish, but
which takes no tint of joy.

My abode is in one of the retired streets of
London. I know not where a man can be so
utterly alone as in this great Babylon. My
favourite room has a bay window overhanging
the pavement, and in its cornices, its
door-frames, and its lofty carved mantelshelf,
testifies to better days than it is ever likely
to see again. The rents in this quarter are
low; and though, at certain long intervals,
the street is as forsaken and silent as Tadmor
in the wilderness, still, the surging rush,
the rattle, the hum of the vast city, echoes
through my solitude from dawn till dark. I
love that echo in my heart.  It is company.
If I had been a happy, I should have been a
busy man—a worker instead of a dreamer.
That little IF—that great impassable gulf—
between the Acutal and the Possible!

I do not begin and end my romances in a
day, in a week, in a month, or even in a year,
as story-tellers do. The threads run on and
on: sometimes smoothly, sometimes in hopeless
entanglement. The merest trifle may
suggest them; now, it is the stealthy, startled
looking back of a man over his shoulder, as
he hurries down the street, as if Fate with
her sleuth-hounds, Vengeance, and Justice,
were following close upon his traces  now,
the downcast grey head of a loiterer, hands
in pockets, chin on breast, drivelling
aimlessly nowhere: again, it is the pitiful face
of a little child clad in mourning; or, it is
the worn figure of a woman in shabby
garments, young, toilsome, hopeless; or, it is
the same figure flaunting in silks and laces,
but a hundredfold more toilsome, more