"There you see," said Osmond, "Dr.
Wycherley agrees with me: yet I assure you I have
only detailed the symptoms, and not the conclusion
I had formed from them."

Jane inquired timidly what that conclusion
was.

"Miss Hardie, we think it one of those obscure
tendencies which are very curable if taken in
time——" Dr. Wycherley ended the sentence—
"But no longer remediable if the fleeting
opportunity is allowed to escape, and diseased
action to pass into diseased organisation."

Jane looked awestruck at their solemnity; but
Mr. Hardie, who was taking advice against the
grain, turned satirical: "Gentlemen," said he,
"be pleased to begin by moderating your own
obscurity; and then perhaps I shall see better
how to cure my son's: what the deuce are you
driving at?"

The two doctors looked at one another
inquiringly; and so settled how to proceed. Dr.
Wycherley explained to Mr. Hardie that there
was a sort of general unreasonable and
superstitious feeling abroad, a kind of terror of the
complaint with which his son was threatened;
"and which, instead of the most remediable of
disorders, is looked at as the most incurable of
maladies:" it was on this account he had learned
to approach the subject with singular caution,
and even with a timidity which was kinder in
appearance than in reality; that he must admit.

"Well, you may speak out, as far as I am
concerned," said Mr. Hardie, with consummate
indifference.

"Oh yes!" said Jane, in a fever of anxiety;
"pray conceal nothing from us."

"Well then, sir, I have not as yet had the
advantage of examining your son personally, but,
from the diagnostics, I have no doubt whatever
he is labouring under the first foreshadowings of
cerebro-psychical perturbation."

Jane and her father stared at him: he might
as well have recited them the alphabet
backwards.

"Well then," said he, observing his learning
had missed fire, "to speak plainly, the symptoms
are characteristic of the initiatory stage of the
germination of a morbid state of the phenomena
of intelligence."

His unprofessional hearers stared another
inquiry.

"In one word, then," said Dr. Wycherley,
waxing impatient at their abominable obtuseness,
"it is the premonitory stage of the precursory
condition of an organic affection of the brain."

"Oh!" said Mr. Hardie, carelessly: " I see;
the boy is going mad."

The doctors stared in their turn at the
prodigious coolness of a tender parent.

"Not exactly," said Dr. Wycherley; "I am
habitually averse to exaggeration of symptoms.
Your son's suggest to me 'the Incubation of
Insanity,' nothing more."

Jane uttered an exclamation of horror: the
doctor soothed her with an assurance that there
was no cause for alarm. "Incipient aberration"
was of easy cure: the mischief lay in delay.
"Miss Hardie," said he, paternally, "during a
long and busy professional career, it has been my
painful province to witness the deplorable
consequences of the non-recognition, by friends and
relatives, of the precedent symptoms of those
organic affections of the brain, the relief of
which was within the reach of well-known
therapeutic agents if exhibited seasonably."

He went on to deplore the blind prejudice of
unprofessional persons; who choose to fancy
that other diseases creep, but Insanity pounces,
on a man: which he expressed thus neatly;
"that other deviations from organic conditions
of health are the subject of clearly defined though
delicate gradations, but that the worst and most
climacteric forms of cerebro-psychical disorder
are suddenly developed affections presenting no
evidence of any antecedent cephalic organic
change, and unaccompanied by a premonitory
stage, or by incipient symptoms."

This chimera he proceeded to confute, by
experience: he had repeatedly been called in to
cases of mania described as sudden, and almost
invariably found the patient had been cranky for
years; which he condensed thus; "His conduct
and behaviour for many years previously to any
symptom of mental aberration being noticed,
had been characterised by actions quite
irreconcilable with the supposition of the existence of
perfect sanity of intellect."

He instanced a parson, whom he had lately
attended, and found him as constipated and
convinced he was John the Baptist engaged to the
Princess Mary as could be.

"But upon investigation of this afflicted
ecclesiastic's antecedent history, I discovered that, for
years before this, he had exhibited conduct
incompatible with the hypothesis of a mind whose
equilibrium had been undisturbed: he had caused
a number of valuable trees to be cut down on his
estate, without being able to offer a sane justification
for such an outrageous proceeding: and
had actually disposed of a quantity of his
patrimonial acres, 'and which' clearly he never
would have parted with had he been in anything
resembling a condition of sanity."

"Did he sell the land and timber below the
market price?" inquired Mr. Hardie, perking
up, and exhibiting his first symptom of interest
in the discussion.

"On that head, sir, my informant, his heir-at-
law, gave me no information: nor did I enter
into that class of detail; you naturally look at
morbid phenomena in a commercial spirit, but
we regard them medically; and, all this time,
most assiduously visiting the sick of his parish
and preaching admirable sermons."

The next instance he gave was of a stockbroker
suffering under general paralysis and a rooted
idea that all the specie in the Bank of England
was his, and ministers in league with foreign
governments to keep him out of it.

"Him," said the doctor, "I discovered to have