The celerity of the journey to London completed the restoration both of my mental and corporeal health. I felt renewed energy; the aimless reveries, the drifting wrack of the mind, had cleared away, and I could again think and act with something not unlike the decision characteristic of my youth.

The disease, as that vague and hazy intellectual lassitude may be justly called, is perhaps not uncommon, especially among those who feel adversity closing like a smithy-vice upon them; but the moody shyness with which it is ever accompanied, has the effect of making the subjects averse to disclose their consciousness of the malady; and yet, when we look around us in society, how visible and numerous are its victims! It must indeed, be allowed, that the inward and outward state of man sympathise with each other; and that the judgment and fortunes partake of some secret reciprocal influence, that makes them fade and wither in companionship. The apothegm is Shakspeare’s, but I do not recollect his exact words. I think, however, it has not been so curiously observed, that when the wheel happens to relapse, the mind also experiences a corresponding revivification. It was certainly so with me.