Try  and  realize  the  feelings  of  one  whose  mind  is  like  a
broken  harp — all  the  medium  tones  gone,  and  only  the
higher  and  lower  left ;  of  one,  too,  whose  circumstances
seem  of  a  piece  with  his  mind,  who  can  enjoy  the  exercise
of  his  better  powers,  and  yet  can  only  live  by  the  monoto-
nous drudgery  of  copying  page  after  page  in  a  clerk's
office ;  of  one  who  is  continually  either  groping  his  way


KECOLLECTIONS  OF  FERGUSON. Ill

ainid  a  chill  melancholy  fog  of  nervous  depression,  or  car-
ried headlong,  by  a  wild  gaiety,  to  all  which  his  better
judgment  would  instruct  him  to  avoid ;  of  one  who,  when
he  indulges  most  in  the  pride  of  superior  intellect,  cannot
away  with  the  thought  that  that  intellect  is  on  the  eve  of
breaking  up,  and  that  he  must  yet  rate  infinitely  lower  in
the  scale  of  rationality  than  any  of  the  nameless  thousands
who  carry  on  the  ordinary  concerns  of  life  around  him."

I  was  grieved  and  astonished,  and  knew  not  what  to
answer. "  You  are  in  a  gloomy  mood  to-day,"  I  at  length
said ;  "  you  are  immersed  in  one  of  the  fogs  you  describe  ;
and  all  the  surrounding  objects  take  a  tinge  of  darkness
from  the  medium  through  which  you  survey  them. Come,
now,  you  must  make  an  exertion,  and  shake  off  your
melancholy. I  have  told  you  all  my  story,  as  I  best  could,
and  you  must  tell  me  all  yours  in  return."

"Well,"  he  replied,  "I  shall,  though  it  mayn't  be  the
best  way  in  the  world  of  dissipating  my  melancholy. I
think  I  must  have  told  you,  when  at  college,  that  I  had  a
maternal  uncle  of  considerable  wealth,  and,  as  the  world
goes,  respectability,  who  resided  in  Aberdeenshire. He
was  placed  on  what  one  may  term  the  table-land  of  so-
ciety; and  my  poor  mother,  whose  recollections  of  him
were  limited  to  a  period  when  there  is  warmth  in  the  feel-
ings of  the  most  ordinary  minds,  had  hoped  that  he  would
willingly  exert  his  influence  in  my  behalf. Much,  doubt-
less, depends  on  one's  setting  out  in  life ;  and  it  would
have  been  something  to  have  been  enabled  to  step  into  it
from  a  level  like  that  occupied  by  my  relative. 