Page:McCosh, John - Advice to Officers in India (1856).djvu/83

 and the dark clouds of melancholy;—and each, and all of these, are so much affected by passing events, revolving in eccentric orbits, that the mental capacity is, as it were, churned into foam by the commotion, effervesces and evaporates, leaving the brain dry, the sensorium a moral quagmire, a hotbed of morbid phantoms and metaphysical miasmata, that poison the springs of life.

On a careful examination, it will be found that most people's spirits rise and fall with the barometer—a dull day or a clear day equally affect them; and perhaps every glimpse of sunshine,and every passing cloud, make some corresponding impression on our sensorium.

It would be very instructive to peruse a faithful journal of the various emotions which glance through the mind, even of the best-regulated individual, for one single day. How often would he be unable to assign any substantial reason for a flow of good spirits or a fit of the blues. What trivial events would be found to kick the beam of his mental equilibrium, from one extreme to the other. How often would he find that one portion of his intellectual faculties is preyed on by the other, as if the real ids that flesh is heir to were not enough to embitter sufficiently the cup of life, but that he must needs conjure up the creations of a morbid fancy and transpose his position,