He rather appeared pleased with a suggestion I threw out for augmenting the elective franchise in Ireland, by making the qualification “an intellectual one,” and extending the right of voting to all who should take a certain degree or diploma in either the University of Dublin or any of the provincial colleges, all admitted as members of learned bodies, and all licentiates of law and physic. This would particularly suit the condition of Ireland, where property is a most inadequate and limited test, and at the same time, by an infusion of educated and thinking men into the mass, serve to counterbalance and even guide the opinions of those less capable of forming judgments. We are becoming more democratic every day. Let our trust be in well-informed, clearsighted democracy, and let the transition be from the aristocracy to the cultivated middle classes, and not to the rule of Feargus O’Connor and his Chartists. And now, to wander down this lonely glen, and forget, if I may, these jarring questions, where men’s passions and ambitions have more at stake than human happiness. Do what I will, think of what I will, the image of--Caroline Graham--yes, I must call her so, rises before me at every step. It is a sad condition of the nervous system when slight impressions cut deep. Like the diseased state of the mucous membrane, when tastes and odours cling and adhere to it for days long, I suppose that the prevalence of such images in the brain would at last lead to insanity, or, at least, that form of it called Monomania. Let no man suppose that this is so very rare a malady. Let us rather ask, Who is quite free from some feature of the affection? The mild cases are the passionate ardour we see exhibited by men in the various and peculiar pursuits in life; the bad ones, only greater in degree, are shut up in asylums. The most singular instance that ever occurred within my own knowledge was one I met several years back in Germany; and as “thereby hangs a tale,” I will set it down in the words of the relator. This is his own recital--in his own handwriting too! There are moments in the life of almost every man which seem like years. The mind, suddenly calling up the memory of bygone days, lives over the early hours of childhood--the bright visions of youth, when all was promise and anticipation--and traverses with a bound the ripe years of manhood, with all their struggles, and cares, and disappointments; and even throws a glance into the dark vista of the future, computing the “to come” from the past; and, at such times as these, one feels that he is already old, and that years have gone over him.