INTRODUCTION

Brantwood, 13th July, 1875.

1. I have been glancing lately at many biographies, and have been much struck by the number of deaths which occur between the ages of fifty and sixty (and, for the most part, in the earlier half of the decade), in cases where the brain has been much used emotionally: or perhaps it would be more accurate to say, where the heart, and the faculties of perception connected with it, have stimulated the brain-action. Supposing such excitement to be temperate, equable, and joyful, I have no doubt the tendency of it would be to prolong, rather than depress, the vital energies. But the emotions of indignation, grief, controversial anxiety and vanity, or hopeless, and therefore uncontending, scorn, are all of them as deadly to the body as poisonous air or polluted water; and when I reflect how much of the active part of my past life has been spent in these states,—and that what may remain to me of life can never more be in any other,—I begin to ask myself, with somewhat pressing arithmetic, how much time is likely to be left me, at the age of fifty-six, to complete the various designs for which, until past fifty, I was merely collecting materials.