mind, is dependant on matter, however unpoetical it may appear in the eyes of the world. In the evening I parted with my companion, after giving him money and advice, which he would abide by until he came to the next public house. I then proceeded to Comery, where I write this letter to thee.

LETTER III.

I AM somewhat better in health, and I hope reason will resume her empire again, or at least wear the semblance of happiness for thy sake for the pleasure of pleasing thee. Thou wouldst no doubt be somewhat astonished at my last, so full of the tortuous windings of a diseased fancy; and it will serve to shew thee how much the imagination is the creature of circumstance; of good or bad health. To tell all this, to the great herd of mankind, would be as absurd as to preach Hebrew to an ass; for few of them understand the grades and shades of maniacism:-they have only their positive sanity, and positive insanity-no medium steps, he's mad. If madness be only an extension of this feeling, I most assuredly have had a peep into the dark choleric chamber; but never entirely lost to the pilot light of reason: my madness was more in the heart than

the head; hence the pang of consciousness, and the sad remembrance of it all. The social ties of friendship, love, and hope, which teach us to compare, were never broken, though, mayhap, hard stretched. But even these sentiments, with all the æther poetry of the soul, carried to a refined extent, are but varieties of madness, in the eyes of some part of the world, and naturally so, for nature did not pitch the key-note of their hearts high enough to join in the more refined concert of sentimental communionthey cannot sympathize, and consequently cannot understand. Why they are so, is a question to a higher power. When I muse upon these things, and sorrow at heart for them, I turn my eye back through the dark vista of time, and see thyself, and a few others, in the lonely vacuum-as solitary heart-lights to light my soul-sick gloom; as bright remembrance spots in the past, shedding their golden rays into the hidden future. What an extension of existence it is, thus to whisper the secret of the heart, through the ear of distance; and in my lone wanderings through the silent glen, to commune as it were with your spirits. It binds me to existence, or else-nay I will

not say what, but it makes amends for a world of evils, which to endure would require more philosophy than I am master of. Our friendship smiles 'mid the withering blasts of adversity, like yonder rock that laughs at the mountain thunder storm: be firm on your part, as I on mine, and like yonder rock, it stands through time, secure. One kindred satellite of friendship, is worth a thousand minor stars of companionship, though they are essential lights in the infinitude of human existence.

After my last I proceeded to Loch Tay, and Kenmore; I followed the main road for about five miles, and then took the mountain pass at the second village, and on reaching the summit a scene opened which well repaid me for my labour. One vast amphitheatre 'of Alpine mountains: cones-broken conesperpendiculars-tottering precipices-black ravines-dark shadowy glens, all grading off in rank and file, and the screens intersecting each other at a thousand points, until their shades of black, blue, and grey, died away in the spiritlike air-tint of nothingness. Had I the faculty of second sight, I would tread on thy great toe, and place the Herschel of distance to thine

eye, that thou mightest participate in this feast of the senses with me, for man is a social animal, and sympathy gives a tenfold enjoyment to these banquets of nature; and to be chained down to the prosing detail of language in conveying the idea of a scene, robs selfenjoyment of half its pleasures. Some of the long periods of our sages, would make one think that mind was in length of memory. I think Johnson was of that opinion. But in my opinion, memory is in inverse ratio to intensity of thought. Increased excitation on the brains, or in other words, thought decreases the power of retaining the minute parts, while it grasps the whole or generalized principle for ease.

Children make the greatest progress in languages, but they cannot draw abstract conclusions. Few can learn a language after thirty. Poets and great geniuses seize analogies and terse styles to communicate their originalities; while your philosophic prosers copy and ramify the principle, till it becomes weakened or lost,

The greatest ideas are those which are made under the greatest physical energies. The greatest minds are those which can bear the highest pressure on the brain without madness,