FRAGMEKT. 205 



tournaments. Their innocence reconciled me to 

 the human fpecies, much better than all the wit 

 of our dramas, and than all the fentences of our 

 Philofophers. But at fight of any one walking up 

 to the place where 1 was, I felt my whole frame 

 agitated, and retired. 1 often faid to myfelf : My 

 fole ftudy has been to merit well of Mankind ; 

 Wherefore, then, am I fhocked, as often as I fee 

 them ? To no purpofe did I call in reafon to my 

 aid : my reafon could do nothing againft a ma- 

 lady which was enfeebling all its powers (i). The 

 very efforts which reafon made to furmount it, 

 ferved only to exhauft her ftill more, becaufe (he 

 employed them againft herfelf. Reafon called, 

 not for vigorous exertion, but for repofe. 



Medicine, it is true, did offer me her afTift- 

 ance. She informed me that the focus of my dif- 

 order was in the nerves. I felt it much better 

 than fhe was able to define it to me. But fuppof- 

 ing 1 had not been too poor to avail myfelf of her 

 prefcriptions, I had too much experience to put 

 any faith in them. Three gentlemen, of my ac- 

 quaintance, tormented with the fame fpecies of in- 

 difpofition, died in a ^ort time of three different 

 remedies, and thefe, pretended fpecifics for the cure 

 of the nervous diforder. The firft, by bathing and 

 bleeding ; the fécond, by the ufe of opium -, and 



the 



