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332 mental power. Here, indeed, at the outset, a serious difficulty is encountered. Certain signs of mental decay are sufficiently obvious, but the signs which mark the progress of the mind to its maximum degree of power, as well as the earlier signs of gradually diminishing mental power, are far more difficult of recognition. This is manifest when we consider that they should be more obvious, one would suppose, to the person whose mind is in question, than to any other; whereas it is a known fact that men do not readily perceive (certainly are not ready to admit) any falling off in mental power, even when it has become very marked to others. "I, the Professor," says Wendell Holmes in the "Professor at the Breakfast-table," "am very much like other men. I shall not find out when I have used up my affinities. What a blessed thing it is that Nature, when she invented, manufactured, and patented her authors, contrived to make critics out of the chips that were left! Painful as the task is, they never fail to warn the author, in the most impressive manner, of the probabilities of failure in what he has undertaken. Sad as the necessity is to their delicate sensibilities, they never hesitate to advertise him of the decline of his powers, and to press upon him the propriety of retiring before he sinks into imbecility." Notwithstanding the irony, which is just enough so far as it relates to ordinary criticism, there can be no question that, when an author's powers are failing, his readers, and especially those who have been his most faithful followers, so to speak, devouring each of his works as it issues from his pen, begin to recognize the decrease of his powers before he is himself conscious that he is losing strength. The case of Scott may be cited as a sufficient illustration, its importance in this respect being derived from the fact that he had long been warmly admired and enthusiastically appreciated by those who at once recognized signs of deterioration in "Count Robert of Paris," and "Castle Dangerous."

Yet judgment is most difficult in such matters. We can readily see why no man should be skilled to detect the signs of change in his own mind, since the self-watching of the growth and decay of mind is an experiment which can be conducted but once, and which is completed only when the mind no longer has the power of grasping all the observed facts and forming a sound opinion upon them. But it is even more natural that those who follow the career of some great mind should often be misled in their judgment as to its varying power. For, it must be remembered that the conditions under which such minds are exercised nearly always vary greatly as time proceeds. This circumstance affects chiefly the correctness of ideas formed as to the decay of mental powers, but it has its bearing also on the supposed increase of these powers. For instance, the earlier works of a young author, diffident perhaps of his strength, or not quite conscious where his chief strength resides, will often be characterized by a weakness which is in no true sense indicative of want of mental power. A work by the