I have met with many wiseacre-sceptics who laugh at the idea of what is vulgarly called a "broken heart," as a direct consequence either of unrequited love or extraordinary grief--admitting, however, in their liberality, that death may ensue from great griefs operating merely as an inductive original cause, which destroying gradually the foundations of health, bring on a train of other ailments, that may, in the end, prove mortal. The admission cares for nothing, as a matter of every-day experience; and the original proposition to which it is objected as a qualification, remains as a truth which may humble the pride of man, and speak to the sceptic through the crushed heart of a fatal experience. I have seen many instances of the fatal effects of grief as a direct mortal agent, killing, by its own unaided energies, as certainly, though not in so short a time, as a blow or a wound in the vital organs of the human body. The common nosologies contain no name for the disease, because, in truth, it cannot properly be called a disease, any more than a stab with a sword can deserve that name; and this, combined with the fact that it is only in a very few instances that the _coup_ works by itself, without the aid of some ailment generated by it, that young practitioners often homologate the vulgar notions that prevail upon this important subject. Among all the many causes of grief to which mankind are daily exposed, I know not that there is one that strikes so deeply into the secret recesses of the vital principle as the loss of a dearly-beloved wife, who has lived with a man for a lengthened period, through early adversity and late prosperity--borne him a family which have bound closer the tie that was knitted by early affection, and who has left him to tread the last weary stages of existence alone, and without that support which almost all men derive from woman. The effects are often supposed to be proportioned to the affection; yet I doubt if this solves the curious problem of the diversity of consequences resulting from this great privation. There are many men of strong powers of mind, who are so constituted that they _cannot_ but press heavily on the support of another. They seem almost to live through the thoughts and feelings of their helpmates; and the energies they take credit for in the busy affairs of the world, have their source--unknown often to themselves--in the bosom of wedded affection. It is in proportion to the strength of the habit of this _leaning_, combined, doubtless, with the coexistent affection, that the effects of the loss of a helpmate, in the later period of life, work with such varied influence on the survivor. It may also seem a curious fact, and I have no doubt of the truth of it, that a man when advanced in years is much more apt to break suddenly down under this visitation than a woman; while, again, the consequence would seem to be reversed if the calamity has overtaken them in the more early stages of