mingles curiously with his eager bursts of ambition and

aspiration : " My feelings and hopes seem ever to be vibrating between assurance and despondency. My soul is bent upon success in my profession, and when indulg- ing in brightest anticipations, the most trivial circum- stance is frequently sufficient to damp my whole ardor

This tendency to depression was not merely the re- action from disappointed hopes or dreams unrealized. It was a constitutional melancholy, which, not only in youth, but even in middle life, seems to have eaten into the man's very soul. The words in which he describes it most definitely have a strange, poignant bitterness that wrings the heart : ** Sometimes I have thought that of all men I was most miserable ; that I was especially doomed to misfortune, to melancholy, to grief. . . . The misery, the deep agony of spirit I have suffered, no mortal knows, nor ever will. . . . The torture of body is severe ; I have had my share of that. ... But all these are slight when compared with the pangs of an offended or wounded spirit. The heart alone knoweth its own sorrow. I have borne it these many years. I have borne it all my life." "

To his beloved brother Linton he endeavors to describe his spiritual malady. It is the secret of my life. I have never told it to any one." i^ But his speech, usually so lucid, is incoherent, stumbling, and obscure. It appears that his physical deficiencies wounded him, as they did

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