four days on our new voyage we saw that we should | for cork-trees, for which he could find no gingerhave been lost after all without him.

To say that Mrs. Dishinore turned out a perfect trump may be familiar, but it is certainly true. She discovered next day that the cook was drowned, so she instantly established herself at the coppers, and worked there and among the wounded like a slave. The instant it was possible to do so, she suggested the propriety of offering up a thanksgiving. And this led me to the conclusion, judging from his splendid intonation, that our wonderful brown friend had been accustomed to read prayers in public. Another person who turned out a real hero was the solitary young midshipman whom we had first seen. His fortune is made. He has a ship of his own now.

We were two long months getting to Valparaiso, and the perfect accord there was among us all, the perfect good temper and mutual kindness which was shown by every one in the ship, made it the happiest voyage I ever made. Out of the hundred people assembled in that ship, there are no two, I am certain, who would not meet now as friends.

It was only when I was passing in a boat, with my brother and sister, under the bows of the ship | at Valparaiso, that I fully understood what had happened. Those beautiful, delicate bows were ripped and bulged into a hideous, shapeless mass, half veiled by a puckered sail, which hid from our view the still more awful gaps it shrouded. The injuries had been mainly above water, and thus had helped to save us.

The brown gentleman had left the ship in care of the captain, who was now well enough to attend to duty, that very morning. We learnt from the shore boats that her Majesty's frigate Diana was in the harbor, and would sail for England that day. As we passed up the harbor we saw her get under way: the six hundred men were still swarming on her rigging as she passed us: on the quarter-deck we saw Hatterton.

beer bottles. But if the reader expects any of the
crudities of physiology in this paper he will be dis-
appointed: pretty certainly he does not expect any,
but he must be a very small reader if his experience
has not taught him that he must constantly submit
to be informed of unnecessary things. It is part of
the established economy of the essay to exclude,
with flourishes of phrase, what no human being
would ever suppose was going to be taken in.
The Nerves, then, for our present purpose, are,
"as one should say," the Nerves! If, as scientific
men assure us, there is, without Nerve, no Thought
(this deviation from the rule just laid down is more
apparent than real, and if it were real, is only the
felicitous exception which illuminates the rule), we
can hardly have too much of the Nerves, unless we
of Thought can have too much. Perhaps it may
maliciously be said that we can, and that something
depends upon the quality. No doubt; but we can
also have too little. Taken absolutely, Thought is
a good thing, and I appeal to common experience
to declare if an excess of a good thing is Nature's
rule? On the contrary, it is so decidedly her ex-
ception that a proverb, of that defiant tone which
is usual in proverbs which apply to exceptions, has
been made on purpose to include the accident when
it does happen to happen. Yet there is such a prej-
udice against the Nerves that even the Muscles have
been preferred to them, and that, too, in a connec-
tion the most unlikely.

No human being has yet pretended to think with
his Muscles, or feel with his muscles. Who ever
heard of the aspiration of a biceps? And yet we
have been told of Muscular Christians, never of
Nervous Christians. It is true the phrase Muscular
Christianity has been repudiated by Mr. Kingsley,
and very properly; but not, as I conceive, on suffi-
ciently broad grounds. A Christian must, like other
people, have muscles, macerate him as you will,
nor is it easy to conceive him without bones. But
I appeal to physiologists whether the Sympathetic
Nervous System is not reckoned a great channel of
emotion? (this is another felicitous and illuminating
exception, admitted because a solitary exception is
always held in suspicion.) The philosophic physiol-
ogist is welcome to suggest that the real final syn-
thesis of nature defeats all such distinctions,
can some of us see where that drives him to, but,
in the mean time, a nervous Christian is a far more
Ty-natural combination than a muscular one.

Yes, he indeed, for he saw us, and cried out to us, "God bless you! God bless you! Good by!" and we answered in a similar manner, and then all sat silent, having found out, now we had lost him, how well we had got to love him.

We found at the hotel on shore a packet directed to my brother in his handwriting. It was an address to the passengers, and ran as follows:

"Rear-Admiral Sir Charles Hatterton presents his compliments to the passengers of the ship phoon, and congratulates them on the successful termination of a very perilous voyage.

-we

The truth, however, is, that the Nerves are the objects of systematic enmity and depreciation among “During his long experience in arctic discovery, mankind at large. Fat, however it may excite comhe has never seen more courage, more patience, and plaint in the fat person, is not, I believe, an object more good-humor displayed than he has lately wit-of enmity, except in an omnibus or in some position nessed among the passengers of the Typhoon, the whole of whom, with four exceptions, were landsmen. "With the heartiest good wishes to every one of them, he bids them heartily farewell."

AN APOLOGY FOR THE NERVES. CONSIDERED as white threads, efferent or afferent, belonging either to the cerebro-spinal or sympathetic system, the Nerves require, so far as I am aware, no apology. An apology for the Glands, or the Tendons, or the Medulla Oblongata would be just as much to the purpose. We know that between Dogmatism and Final Causes men fall to the ground; and that Paley has, in his Natural Theology, felt it polite to offer something like an apology

where it occupies an unusual portion of the planetary space. Prophetic denunciations against such as be fat in Zion are on record; none against such as be nervous. Yet the fat man is tolerated, loved, at worst laughed at: while the nervous man is not only laughed at, he is disliked. But is it Fat that has been the chief benefactor of the human race? Was it a fat man that invented printing? Was it a fat man that discovered the circulation of the blood? Was George Stephenson fat? Were the martyrs fat men? Heliogabalus was, but was Antoninus? Julius Caesar, though for his own selfish ends he preferred fat men about his person, was he fat himself? Was Hampden a fat man? Was Milton? Was Cromwell? Was William III.? No; it was George IV. who was the fat man; and he

66

built the fat pavilion at Brighton. Charles James | but without surprise; for have not many of us, comFox was fat; but he gambled. Falstaff was fat; rades in nervousness, been asked, "What makes you but he was not a respectable character. Hamlet, so nervous? You should take tonics!" when we again, was fat; but he believed in ghosts and was a were no more nervous in that sense than the very undecided young man. The fattest man of jubilant shrimp at sunset, or the lark in the happy modern times is a distinguished undertaker, he agitation of his matin song. may make good coffins, but I am not a judge of coffins. On the other hand, is Mr. Tennyson fat? Is Mr. John Stuart Mill fat? Is Mr. Browning fat? Is Mr. Gladstone fat? No; the nation would not trust its income with a fat man; it knows better. The only fat financier I ever heard of was Mr. Hudson the railway king. Thus, it is with nervous men that we trust our money, and it is from nervous men that we expect all that makes money worth having. Or if this statement should be too wide, let it be met by contradiction, there are plenty of contradictory people in the world, and the other side have too long had it all their own way, - have too long been permitted to treat the Nervous as not only miserable in themselves, but the causes of misery in others.

The truth is, the vulgar phlegmatic do not love to see others lively and brisk. A creature with only a few sides-say two, an inside and an outsideis naturally jealous of another with a hundred facets, or is at least puzzled by it. So, a crocodile, which takes fifteen minutes to turn round, might fancy a kitten chasing its own tail mad or diseased. True, as we all know, or as the attendants at many places of public entertainment will tell us if we ask, the phlegmatic vulgar are particularly fond of watching machinery in motion, anything that "goes of itself" is a passion with them. But then there is here no room for comparison or jealousy. The phlegmatic man knows that he might stop a steam-bobbin; that, in any case, he can do things the bobbin cannot do, and that somebody could make another bobbin. But Part of this results from sheer error in classifica- he cannot repress the disturbing mobility of the tion. It was with extreme indignation that I once nervous man; he may impute borborrigmi, and recread "Dr. Trotter (of Bath) on the Nervous Tem-ommend potass or cardamoms, or even "the warm perament," a book lent to me by a friend, who gums"; but he could not have given Elizabeth Barsupposed me to be, as a nervous man, both wretched rett Browning in charge for reminding him of a fireand a cause of wretchedness. In Dr. Trotter I fly, or stopped Douglas Jerrold like a steam-bobbin. found an elaborate discussion of Indigestion! His Thank heavens, we have yet our Magna Charta, idea of a nervous person was, I found, a person who our Bill of Rights, our liberty of the subject! Sunt had "the wind"; who had a poor appetite; who certi denique fines,- there are limits, and it galls had ignominious symptoms not to be particularized; who suffered from "borborrigmi." And his prescriptions were such beggarly elements as calcined magnesia, gentian, exercise, occupation, and "the warm gums. I returned the book with disgust, assuring my friend that, however nervous I might be, I never had "the wind," knew nothing of “ borborrigmi," ate like a trooper, walked ten miles a day, and had ample "occupation." To this hour I find people who "understand". ah, how people do "understand" things! that I am "nervous"; suppose that what they call "nervousness" is a sort of disThey recommend rhubarb, or peppermint drops, or more exercise, or pale ale. The fact is, they do not understand vivacity of sensation. They think it is a complaint; they localize it in the regions under or below the waistband, and prescribe to the "nervous" just as a penguin or a porpoise might prescribe to a darting swallow or a leaping salmon.

ease.

him.

One thing remains, — he can confound nervousness with indigestion, and make it odious by maladive associations innumerable. It is high time to write this Apology, and disclaim the whole, from Indescribable Agony, and Incapacity for Business, to the end of the alphabet. We nervous folk have no agony, and are not incapable. Our Nerves are not disease, they are capacity; we have as much right to wonder at your lethargy as you at our vivacity.

Nervous people, again, are constantly confounded with ill-tempered people. Now, the one essential condition of genuine ill-temper is stupidity. It is the fool, and the fool only, he who cannot quickly distinguish between accident and design, and readily trace effects to causes, that is angry without cause, or for more than a minute beyond cause. Now, your nervous man is not often a fool - how should he be? - and is rarely absurd in his anger. It is true he may often be tempted to express his disgust at the ineptitudes of others, but what then? a sensitive creature,

Thus the nervous suffer in popular estimation because they are confounded with the dyspeptic, and, it may be added, with the hysterical. There is a More sensible than are the horns of cockled snails, complaint, or manifestation, or something, which in the days of Pamela and Joseph Andrews was known | (is that correct ?) must have some means of protectas the megrims, or the doldrums, or the vapors; it ing itself. There are limits to human endurance, was a fine madam's common excuse for not being and who will have the boldness to fix them? Job seen, or for neglecting a duty, and it was supposed was patient, but "did Job e'er lose a barrel of such to be cured by "Hungary water," for which the ale?" When the fire has been let out, and the modern succedaneum is red lavender. I found all door left unshut, and the letter put into the wrong the symptoms of the "megrims" described in Dr. box, and the sheet put damp on the bed for the Trotter's book as symptoms of the nervous temper- seven times seventieth time; when "gentle dulament. In the name of all the nervous I indignant-ness," glorying in its shame, has had my right cheek ly repel the slander; that is just the way of the and my left, is the common privilege of speech to world, it never will discriminate. Let hysterics be denied me? No, and if my speech is pungent, speak for themselves, we, the real honest "nervous it is a mercy to gentle dulness, as well as a relief ladies and gentlemen, do not have "a difficulty in to me. In Homer even the wounded god may comswallowing," and, most distinctly, do not have "St. plain; is the right of complaint refused to me, beVitus's dance," which is described by the infamous cause I happen to understand the use of words? Trotter as part of the ordinary diagnosis of our tem- How is gentle dulness to know its differentia unless perament! I speak both in sorrow and in anger, the nervous people howl when hit, and use appro

:

1. He never knows when a thing is going to hap

pen.

2. He never knows when a thing is happening. 3. He never remembers a thing when it has happened.

--

priate and convincing language? The displeased | to despise, cowards. And this is another misrepsurprise which the sensitive involuntarily manifest resentation - with cowards the nervous are perpetat the insensibility of the insensible is a beneficent ually confounded. Now let us waive all distinctions provision for the Education of the Human Race. - which, indeed, can never be made final-beThis is a great topic, and worthy of extensive treat- tween moral and physical courage, and it will cerment. The average human being, he who is always tainly not be found that the bravest men are the speaking opprobriously of the Nerves, is distin- least nervous. The greatest of the Napiers was an guished by three characteristics: exquisitely nervous man. The late Rev. F. W. Robertson of Brighton may be said to have died of a fine nervous system, - but he had all the instincts and characteristics of a soldier, and sacrificed himself to his father's wish in entering the church instead of the army. The list of illustrative instances might be much extended; but it is unnecessary. Without pushing beyond the truth, and looking candidly round the whole subject, we must all of us see that it is absurd to suppose the highest forms of any fine quality exhibited by the lower organizations. The very essence of being "nervous" is apprehensiveness, or being quick to apprehend things. This may minister to fearfulness, but it is not fear. The hawk is not afraid of his prey because he sees it afar off, nor the savage of his enemy because he hears the tramp of his advance miles away in the desert. -But a nervous writer, using similes like these on a simple subject, in a playful vein, is afraid of making the subject absurd, and stops short!

These melancholy features, which are, in truth, the brand of inferiority, he turns to a boast. It is the function of the nervous, a function not free from pain, to worry him into proper sensibility. If he knew his place, and his obligations, he would sing hymns in praise of his benefactors:

Who taught me when there was a draught,
And showed me perils, fore and aft,
And frowned when 1, untimely, laughed?
The Nervous!

Who told me when the glass would rise
Or fall, and with their prophecies
Or recollections, made me wise?

The Nervous!

Who heard a crash before it fell,
And knew things were not going well,
And would some warning story tell?
The Nervous!

Who, when I was a pachyderm,
By many a proper, piercing term,
Thinned my coarse skin, so hard and firm?
The Nervous!

The difference between the nervous and those
who depreciate them is not, however, to be expressed
by such a figure as that of a difference in the thick-
ness of the skin. Compared with the phlegmatic
vulgar the nervous have antennæ,· they have a
sixth sense,
a second sight! They "see as from
a tower the end of all," when others see only fog.
They are the Jessie Browns of every Lucknow.
They are the Hugin and Mugin of Odin's ears.
They possess all the fairies' gifts that the unselfish
need care for. They carry the turquoise that turns
yellow at the approach of a lie; and, to make an
end of raptures, they have their inconveniences, and
very often get their light narrow wheels knocked
about by the abounding heavy broad wheels of life.
But their revenges compensate them. When Count
D'Orsay, in his filmily-built chaise, struck off the
wheel of a stupid, stolid brewer's dray that obsti-
nately blocked the path, he called it the triumph of
mind over matter. Such is the triumph of the ner-
vous element over the phlegmatic element in human
affairs. And, if it sometimes gets the worst of it,
what then? "You young rascal," said the old gen-
tleman to the rash little boy in the street, "if that
cab had run over you where would you have been
then?" and the boy answered," Up behind, a-takin'
of his number!" Just so; when vulgar brute force
runs over Nerve, where is Nerve immediately?
Why, "Up behind, a-takin' of his number!" It is
a glorious mission.

All men despise, or think they despise, or pretend

I am told for the thousandth time that this story is not true

But what business is that of mine? I roll the responsibility back upon the originator, why should we doubt a gentleman's word? Gentleman, indeed!" says a voice, — "it was a penny-a-liner!" But surely a man may tell the truth at a penny a line, - he is far more likely to grow florid if you offer him a guinea a line!

66

It may be taken for granted by phlegmatic people that the apprehensiveness of the high nervous temperament is far greater than it appears, or than it can be intelligibly represented to be. We all know the famous Turner anecdote. "Mr. Turner, I never saw blues and reds like yours in the sky!" No, maʼam; but don't you wish you could?" Now, in reality, no human being need wish to change places with another, - it may be my mistake, but I do not believe any human being ever does, or did, or will wish to relinquish his identity: no, not on the rack. But that the "nerves" see "blues and reds" which others do not see; that the difference between moderate nerve and much nerve is the difference between the apprehensiveness of a babe and the apprehensiveness of a grown person is as certain as that twice three are six. In reality the old schoolboy story of "Eyes and No-Eyes" ought to be called Nerves and No-Nerves; although an image borrowed from the sense of sight may help us to apprehend the difference between an organization like that of the stout tradesman next door, and De Quincey or Hartley Coleridge. I have often wondered how short-sighted men are affected by female beauty. How do they feel in a ball-room, for instance? Necessarily short sight must miss seeing loveliness at the farther end of the room; while ordinary sight might have the whole current of his life changed by it. How ridiculous, one might here say, is our moral criticism of each other, unless we regard it as give-and-take, tit-for-tat, not that my wrongness is lessened by your wrongness, you know, or that moral distinctions are obliterated, but that in what may be called the courtesies of ethics, the mote must remember the beam.

I do not at all know whether human conditions are equally balanced, nor even whether they are "pretty equally" balanced or not. It is often asserted, but nobody knows anything about it. But in mere quantity of sensation, the nervous people in the pleasures of sense? Yes, certainly, says our would probably claim to have the best of it. What, nervous friend, a fig for your pleasures of sense! What is "sense"? Do you mean to tell me that the man who could "die of a rose in aromatic pain'

fins.

built the fat pavilion at Brighton. Charles James | but without surprise; for have not many of us, comFox was fat; but he gambled. Falstaff was fat; but he was not a respectable character. Hamlet, again, was fat; but he believed in ghosts and was a very undecided young man. The fattest man of modern times is a distinguished undertaker, he may make good coffins, but I am not a judge of cofOn the other hand, is Mr. Tennyson fat? Is Mr. John Stuart Mill fat? Is Mr. Browning fat? Is Mr. Gladstone fat? No; the nation would not trust its income with a fat man; it knows better. The only fat financier I ever heard of was Mr. Hudson the railway king. Thus, it is with nervous men that we trust our money, and it is from nervous men that we expect all that makes money worth having. Or if this statement should be too wide, let it be met by contradiction, - there are plenty of contradictory people in the world, and the other side have too long had it all their own way, — have too long been permitted to treat the Nervous as not only miserable in themselves, but the causes of misery in others.

rades in nervousness, been asked, "What makes you so nervous? You should take tonics!" when we were no more "nervous" in that sense than the jubilant shrimp at sunset, or the lark in the happy agitation of his matin song.

The truth is, the vulgar phlegmatic do not love to see others lively and brisk. A creature with only a few sides—say two, an inside and an outsideis naturally jealous of another with a hundred facets, or is at least puzzled by it. So, a crocodile, which takes fifteen minutes to turn round, might fancy a kitten chasing its own tail mad or diseased. True, as we all know, or as the attendants at many places of public entertainment will tell us if we ask, the phlegmatic vulgar are particularly fond of watching machinery in motion, anything that "goes of itself" is a passion with them. But then there is here no room for comparison or jealousy. The phlegmatic man knows that he might stop a steam-bobbin; that, in any case, he can do things the bobbin cannot do, and that somebody could make another bobbin. But he cannot repress the disturbing mobility of the nervous man; he may impute borborrigmi, and recgums"; but he could not have given Elizabeth Barrett Browning in charge for reminding him of a firefly, or stopped Douglas Jerrold like a steam-bobbin. Thank heavens, we have yet our Magna Charta, our Bill of Rights, our liberty of the subject! Sunt certi denique fines, - there are limits, and it galls him.

Part of this results from sheer error in classification. It was with extreme indignation that I once read "Dr. Trotter (of Bath) on the Nervous Tem-ommend potass or cardamoms, or even "the warm perament," -a book lent to me by a friend, who supposed me to be, as a nervous man, both wretched and a cause of wretchedness. In Dr. Trotter I found an elaborate discussion of— Indigestion! His idea of a nervous person was, I found, a person who had "the wind"; who had a poor appetite; who had ignominious symptoms not to be particularized; | who suffered from "borborrigmi." And his prescrip- One thing remains, he can confound nervoustions were such beggarly elements as calcined mag-ness with indigestion, and make it odious by malanesia, gentian, exercise, occupation, and "the warm dive associations innumerable. It is high time to gums." I returned the book with disgust, assuring write this Apology, and disclaim the whole, from my friend that, however nervous I might be, I never Indescribable Agony, and Incapacity for Business, to had the wind," knew nothing of "borborrigmi," the end of the alphabet. We nervous folk have no ate like a trooper, walked ten miles a day, and had agony, and are not incapable. Our Nerves are not ample "occupation." To this hour I find people disease, they are capacity; we have as much right who " understand". ah, how people do "under- to wonder at your lethargy as you at our vivacity. stand" things! - that I am "nervous"; suppose that what they call "nervousness" is a sort of disease. They recommend rhubarb, or peppermint drops, or more exercise, or pale ale. The fact is, they do not understand vivacity of sensation. They think it is a complaint; they localize it in the regions under or below the waistband, and prescribe to the "nervous" just as a penguin or a porpoise might prescribe to a darting swallow or a leaping salmon.

--

Nervous people, again, are constantly confounded with ill-tempered people. Now, the one essential condition of genuine ill-temper is stupidity. It is the fool, and the fool only, he who cannot quickly distinguish between accident and design, and readily trace effects to causes, that is angry without cause, or for more than a minute beyond cause. Now, your nervous man is not often a fool - how should he be? - and is rarely absurd in his anger. It is true he may often be tempted to express his disgust at the ineptitudes of others, but what then? a sensitive creature,

Thus the nervous suffer in popular estimation because they are confounded with the dyspeptic, and, it may be added, with the hysterical. There is a More sensible than are the horns of cockled snails, complaint, or manifestation, or something, which in the days of Pamela and Joseph Andrews was known (is that correct?) must have some means of protectas the megrims, or the doldrums, or the vapors; it ing itself. There are limits to human endurance, was a fine madam's common excuse for not being and who will have the boldness to fix them? Job seen, or for neglecting a duty, and it was supposed was patient, but "did Job e'er lose a barrel of such to be cured by " Hungary water," for which the ale?" When the fire has been let out, and the modern succedaneum is red lavender. I found all door left unshut, and the letter put into the wrong the symptoms of the "megrims" described in Dr. box, and the sheet put damp on the bed for the Trotter's book as symptoms of the nervous temper-seven times seventieth time; when "gentle dulament. In the name of all the nervous I indignant-ness," glorying in its shame, has had my right cheek ly repel the slander; that is just the way of the and my left, is the common privilege of speech to world, it never will discriminate. Let hysterics be denied me? No, and if my speech is pungent, speak for themselves, we, the real honest " nervous it is a mercy to gentle dulness, as well as a relief ladies and gentlemen, do not have "a difficulty in to me. In Homer even the wounded god may comswallowing," and, most distinctly, do not have "St. plain; is the right of complaint refused to me, beVitus's dance," which is described by the infamous cause I happen to understand the use of words? Trotter as part of the ordinary diagnosis of our tem- How is gentle dulness to know its differentia unless perament! I speak both in sorrow and in anger, the nervous people howl when hit, and use appro

Saturday

1. He never knows when a thing is going to hap

pen.

2. He never knows when a thing is happening. 3. He never remembers a thing when it has happened.

-

priate and convincing language? The displeased to despise, cowards. And this is another misrepsurprise which the sensitive involuntarily manifest resentation-with cowards the nervous are perpetat the insensibility of the insensible is a beneficent ually confounded. Now let us waive all distinctions provision for the Education of the Human Race. which, indeed, can never be made final-beThis is a great topic, and worthy of extensive treat-tween moral and physical courage, and it will cerment. The average human being, he who is always tainly not be found that the bravest men are the speaking opprobriously of the Nerves, is distin- least nervous. The greatest of the Napiers was an guished by three characteristics: exquisitely nervous man. The late Rev. F. W. Robertson of Brighton may be said to have died of a fine nervous system, - but he had all the instincts and characteristics of a soldier, and sacrificed himself to his father's wish in entering the church instead of the army. The list of illustrative instances might be much extended; but it is unnecessary. Without pushing beyond the truth, and looking candidly round the whole subject, we must all of us see that it is absurd to suppose the highest forms of any fine quality exhibited by the lower organizations. The very essence of being "nervous' is apprehensiveness, or being quick to apprehend things. This may minister to fearfulness, but it is not fear. The hawk is not afraid of his prey because he sees it afar off, nor the savage of his enemy because he hears the tramp of his advance miles away in the desert. -But a nervous writer, using similes like these on a simple subject, in a playful vein, is afraid of making the subject absurd, and stops short!

These melancholy features, which are, in truth, the brand of inferiority, he turns to a boast. It is the function of the nervous, a function not free from pain, to worry him into proper sensibility. If he knew his place, and his obligations, he would sing hymns in praise of his benefactors:

Who taught me when there was a draught,
And showed me perils, fore and aft,
And frowned when I, untimely, laughed?
The Nervous!

Who told me when the glass would rise
Or fall, and with their prophecies
Or recollections, made me wise?

The Nervous!

Who heard a crash before it fell,

And knew things were not going well,
And would some warning story tell?
The Nervous!

Who, when I was a pachyderm,
By many a proper, piercing term,
Thinned my coarse skin, so hard and firm?
The Nervous!

The difference between the nervous and those
who depreciate them is not, however, to be expressed
by such a figure as that of a difference in the thick-
ness of the skin. Compared with the phlegmatic
vulgar the nervous have antenna, - they have a
sixth sense,
a second sight! They "see as from
a tower the end of all," when others see only fog.
They are the Jessie Browns of every Lucknow.
They are the Hugin and Mugin of Odin's ears.
They possess all the fairies' gifts that the unselfish
need care for. They carry the turquoise that turns
yellow at the approach of a lie; and, to make an
end of raptures, they have their inconveniences, and
very often get their light narrow wheels knocked
about by the abounding heavy broad wheels of life.
But their revenges compensate them. When Count
D'Orsay, in his filmily-built chaise, struck off the
wheel of a stupid, stolid brewer's dray that obsti-
nately blocked the path, he called it the triumph of
mind over matter. Such is the triumph of the ner-
vous element over the phlegmatic element in human
affairs. And, if it sometimes gets the worst of it,
what then? "You young rascal," said the old gen-
tleman to the rash little boy in the street, "if that
cab had run over you where would you have been
then?" and the boy answered, "Up behind, a-takin'
of his number!" Just so; when vulgar brute force
runs over Nerve, where is Nerve immediately?
Why,Up behind, a-takin' of his number!" It is
a glorious mission.

All men despise, or think they despise, or pretend

I am told for the thousandth time that this story is not true. But what business is that of mine? I roll the responsibility back upon the originator, why should we doubt a gentleman's word? "Gentleman, indeed!" says a voice, "it was a penny-a-liner!" But surely a man may tell the truth at a penny a line, he is far more likely to grow florid if you offer him a guinea a line!

"No,

It may be taken for granted by phlegmatic people that the apprehensiveness of the high nervous temperament is far greater than it appears, or than it can be intelligibly represented to be. We all know the famous Turner anecdote. "Mr. Turner, I never saw blues and reds like yours in the sky!" ma'am; but don't you wish you could?" Now, in reality, no human being need wish to change places with another, it may be my mistake, but I do not believe any human being ever does, or did, or will wish to relinquish his identity: no, not on the rack. But that the "nerves" see "blues and reds" which others do not see; that the difference between moderate nerve and much nerve is the difference between the apprehensiveness of a babe and the apprehensiveness of a grown person is as certain as that twice three are six. In reality the old schoolboy story of " Eyes and No-Eyes" ought to be called Nerves and No-Nerves; although an image borrowed from the sense of sight may help us to apprehend the difference between an organization like that of the stout tradesman next door, and De Quincey or Hartley Coleridge. I have often wondered how short-sighted men are affected by female beauty. How do they feel in a ball-room, for instance? Necessarily short sight must miss seeing loveliness at the farther end of the room; while ordinary sight might have the whole current of his life changed by it. How ridiculous, one might here say, is our moral criticism of each other, unless we not that my regard it as give-and-take, tit-for-tat, wrongness is lessened by your wrongness, you know, or that moral distinctions are obliterated, but that in what may be called the courtesies of ethics, the mote must remember the beam.

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I do not at all know whether human conditions

are equally balanced, nor even whether they are "pretty equally" balanced or not. It is often asserted, but nobody knows anything about it. But in mere quantity of sensation, the nervous people would probably claim to have the best of it. What, in the pleasures of sense? Yes, certainly, says our nervous friend, a fig for your pleasures of sense! What is "sense"? Do you mean to tell me that the man who could ❝ die of a rose in aromatic pain"