Again and again I have seen such cases at Oxford, where men were clearly no longer themselves, and yet had to be treated as if they were; nay, continue to exercise their old influence till at last the crash came, and one began to understand what had seemed so strange, and more than strange, in their behaviour. I believe there are as many degrees of insanity as there are of shortsightedness and deafness, and the line that divides sanity from insanity is often very small. I have had to watch the waverings of this line in several cases, and it is enough to upset one’s own equilibrium to have to deal with a friend who to-day is quite like himself and quite like ourselves, and the next day a raving lunatic. My predecessor at Oxford, Dr. Trithen, half Russian, half Swiss by birth, and a man of extraordinary gifts and wonderfully attractive, went slowly out of his mind and had at last to be sent to an asylum. But even then he wrote the most reasonable and touching letters to me on all sorts of subjects, though when I went to see him he was quite unapproachable. Fortunately he died soon after from brain disease, but who could say what was the cause of it? Nothing remains of him but the edition of a Sanskrit play, the Vîracharitra. But his knowledge of Sanskrit and all sorts of languages, his peculiar power of mimicry in imitating the exact pronunciation of different dialects, and his knack of copying Oriental MSS. so that one could hardly tell the difference between the original and the copy were quite amazing. He might have grown to be another Mezzofanti if the fates had not been against him. He was the very type of a fascinating Russian, full of kindness and courtesy, sparkling in conversation, always ready to help others and most careless about himself; but there always was an expression in his coruscating eyes which spoke of danger, and foreboded the tragedy which finished his young and promising life.