Much of my father's failure in its early stages was at first ascribed by those anxiously watching him, to repeated attacks of the influenza--at that time a prevailing epidemic--from which he had suffered greatly, and to which he attributed his own feelings of weakness; but alas! the weakness he felt was as much mental as bodily (though he had certainly declined much in bodily strength), and after his return home it gradually increased upon him. The uncertain step--the confused manner--the eye once so keen and so intelligent, now either wandering restlessly or fixed as it were in blank contemplation--all showed that the over-wrought mind was worn out. One of the plainest signs of this was the cessation of his accustomed labors; but while doing nothing (with him how plain a proof that nothing could be done), he would frequently anticipate a coming period of his usual industry. His mind, while any spark of its reasoning powers remained, was busy with its old day-dreams--the History of Portugal--the History of the Monastic Orders--the Doctor--all were soon to be taken in hand in earnest--all completed, and new works added to these. For a considerable time after he had ceased to compose, he took pleasure in reading, and the habit continued after the power of comprehension was gone. His dearly-prized books, indeed, were a pleasure to him almost to the end, and he would walk slowly round his library looking at them, and taking them down mechanically. In the earlier stages of his disorder (if the term may be fitly applied to a case which was not a perversion of the faculties, but their decay) he could still converse at times with much of his old liveliness and energy. When the mind was, as it were, set going upon some familiar subject, for a little time you could not perceive much failure; but if the thread was broken, if it was a conversation in which new topics were started, or if any argument was commenced, his powers failed him at once, and a painful sense of this seemed to come over him for the moment. His recollection first failed as to recent events, and his thoughts appeared chiefly to dwell upon those long past, and as his mind grew weaker, these recollections seemed to recede still farther back. Names he could rarely remember, and more than once, when trying to recall one which he felt he ought to know, I have seen him press his hand upon his brow and sadly exclaim, "Memory! memory! where art thou gone?" But this failure altogether was so gradual, and at the same time so complete, that I am inclined to hope and believe there was not on the whole much painful consciousness of it; and certainly for more than a year preceding his death, he passed his time as in a dream, with little, if any knowledge of what went on around him.