Collins was unhappy; he hardly knew why. Possessed of a poetic temperament--nurtured in the lap of ease and wealth--every thing provided for him, he had never learned _to think_, to reason, but gave free scope to any impulse that came across him. Misfortune he could not bear, for he had never calculated for its inevitable coming; disappointment unmanned him, for he esteemed that wealth exempted him from the common lot of mortality. He had had an unfortunate attachment--as what young man has not?--and he thought he must be melancholy and wretched, to be Byronic and sentimental. He was, as I found out upon a longer acquaintance, for my own foolish fancies made me singularly acute in tracing the rhapsodies of feeling in others, in a false and unnatural state of mind; a maniac, a madman, unsound. We are apt only to attach the name of madness to extravagant actions and incoherent words, but there is a madness which escapes the common eye--a madness of the soul, which as effectually destroys the balance and contracts the usefulness of man's life, as the wildest inconsistencies of conduct. With every means of happiness within his reach, but for a strange and ridiculous fancy; with riches, the highest connexions, a fine person and good education, this young man indulged the idea that he was soon to die. It was impossible to shake off this illusion. Considering himself as doomed, he told me that he thought he was bound to make the most of the little time that remained for him, and he supported himself under this idea, so terrific to an ill-regulated mind, by opium, brandy, and any kind of stimulus. Now his disease was this: Having taken by some accident this impression, he resorted to a bad remedy to drive it away. Each application only drove the poison still deeper into his system. He allowed himself no lucid interval. Could he have been prostrated by a fit of sickness, and placed under proper care, and recovered slowly from his disease, his mind might have been restored. But once in, he continued to weaken his strength by artificial stimulus, and his mind had no opportunity to resume its natural tone. The drunkard only can recover from his malady by going through the ordeal of a trial by water. He must expect to be prostrated. He must suffer intense agony for days, and perhaps weeks, but if he perseveres, his cure is certain. Collins visited at some houses, and was caressed by a few, as 'a character.' He enjoyed the reputation of being an elegant scholar, among persons to whom he had never given the slightest evidence of scholarship, and who probably did not know what the classics were. This is very common. Who ever knew a case of a young man's throwing himself away, particularly if his connections are respectable, when it was not said: 'What a pity! He is the flower of the family; might be any thing, only----'