“From that time, Sophie, my disease became periodical; Raymond was my constant attendant. These repeated attacks of lunacy impaired my temper; I became gloomy, irascible, misanthropic. My attacks of phrensy became less frequent and violent, but my gloom deepened as a natural consequence; for unless I could have been _cured_ it was even _better_ that these regular storms should disperse the unwholesome vapors of my mind. There is a wonderful analogy between the soul and the atmosphere—storms clear both—though in storms, both mental and atmospheric, there is sometimes much damage done. Well! the storms had well nigh ceased, but the gloom gathered thicker and thicker in my mind, and working up through it was one irrational wish—a desire to re-marry; and with this returned in all its former force my idiosyncrasy—of seeking the reluctant—pursuing the flying—catching the resisting—and in the darkening of my gloom this deepened into the desire of _torturing the victim_! You shudder, Sophie! but this was insanity. Every passion in its excess is moral insanity—-every exaggerated idiosyncrasy is mental insanity; and in madness, brought about by any other external cause, the master passion, or the distinguishing idiosyncrasy, if not entirely _reversed_, is exaggerated to phrensy. _My_ idiosyncrasy was exaggerated—because morbid. I had left my pulpit fearing that if I did not my pulpit would eject _me_. I had shut myself up in the villa, and brooded over my wish, and the readiest way of accomplishing it. At this time I received a letter from Mr. May, inquiring the reason of my resignation of my pulpit—a notice of which he had seen in the ‘Church Organ.’ I replied ‘domestic affliction,’—‘the _loss_ of my wife,’—she _was_ lost—but need I blazon my dishonor by revealing the _manner_ of her loss? _He_ understood, simple old man! that she was _dead_, and there he left it. The correspondence ceased. A few months from that time I received at the same moment the news of his death and a call to fill his pulpit. I accepted it, glad to escape from my neighborhood. I sent Raymond off to college—shut up the villa, leaving it in charge of old Jupiter, who lived at a porter’s lodge at the gate, and I came down here, full of my purpose of finding another wife. You, Sophie, at first sight, struck my fancy; as usual with my peculiar mood of love, your shrinking from me but lured me to the chase—but added zest to the idea of catching you; your avowed dislike and shuddering antipathy but served to intensify the desire to seize and torture you—forgive me, Sophie! this was insanity. Though constantly threatened with an attack of phrensy, I had not one single one after leaving the scene of my sorrows. I married you, Sophie, as I had married Fanny—in spite of your tears and prayers—in defiance of your antipathy and against your will. When I had thought it was safe to let him know it, when he could no longer interfere, or at least when I thought that there was no _time_ left for