"In those years it must be that Dr. Simcott, physician in Huntingdon, had to do with Oliver's hypochondriac maladies. He told Sir Philip Warwick, unluckily specifying no date, or none that has survived, 'he had often been sent for at midnight;' Mr. Cromwell for many years was very 'splenetic,' (spleen-struck,) often thought he was just about to die, and also 'had fancies about the Town Cross.'[25] Brief intimation, of which the reflective reader may make a great deal. Samuel Johnson too had hypochondrias; all great souls are apt to have; and to be in thick darkness generally, till the eternal ways and the celestial guiding stars disclose themselves, and the vague abyss of life knit itself up into firmaments for them. The temptations in the wilderness, choices of Hercules, and the like, in succinct or loose form, are appointed for every man that will assert a soul in himself and be a man. Let Oliver take comfort in his dark sorrows and melancholies. The quantity of sorrow he has, does it not mean withal the quantity of _sympathy_ he has, the quantity of faculty and victory he shall yet have? 'Our sorrow is the inverted image of our nobleness.' The depth of our despair measures what capability, and height of claim, we have to hope. Black smoke as of Tophet filling all your universe, it can yet by true heart-energy become _flame_, and brilliancy of heaven. Courage!" Were the flame but a pure as well as a bright flame! Sometimes we know the black phantoms change to white angel forms; the vulture is metamorphosed into a dove. Was it so in this instance? Unlike Mr. Carlyle, we are willing to let each reader judge for himself; but perhaps we should not be so generous if we had studied ourselves sick in wading through all that mass of papers, and had nothing to defend us against the bitterness of biliousness, except a growing enthusiasm about our hero. EMERSON'S ESSAYS[26] At the distance of three years this volume follows the first series of Essays, which have already made to themselves a circle of readers, attentive, thoughtful, more and more intelligent; and this circle is a large one if we consider the circumstances of this country, and of England also, at this time. In England it would seem there are a larger number of persons waiting for an invitation to calm thought and sincere intercourse than among ourselves. Copies of Mr. Emerson's first published little volume called "Nature," have there been sold by thousands in a short time, while one edition has needed seven years to get circulated here. Several of his orations and essays from the "Dial" have also been republished there, and met with a reverent and earnest response. We suppose that while in England the want of such a voice is as great as here, a larger number are at leisure to recognize that want; a far larger number have set foot in the speculative region, and have ears refined to appreciate these melodious accents.