But here, in the meantime, there seems to swim up some outline of a
new cerebral hygiene and a good time coming, when experienced
advisers shall send a man to the proper measured level for the ode,
the biography, or the religious tract; and a nook may be found
between the sea and Chimborazo, where Mr. Swinburne shall be able to
write more continently, and Mr. Browning somewhat slower.
Is it a return of youth, or is it a congestion of the brain? It is a
sort of congestion, perhaps, that leads the invalid, when all goes
well, to face the new day with such a bubbling cheerfulness. It is
certainly congestion that makes night hideous with visions, all the
chambers of a many-storeyed caravanserai, haunted with vociferous
nightmares, and many wakeful people come down late for breakfast in
the morning. Upon that theory the cynic may explain the whole affair
- exhilaration, nightmares, pomp of tongue and all. But, on the
other hand, the peculiar blessedness of boyhood may itself be but a
symptom of the same complaint, for the two effects are strangely
similar; and the frame of mind of the invalid upon the Alps is a sort
of intermittent youth, with periods of lassitude.
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