1844-54' STRUGGLE WITH ILL-HEALTH. 239 



enjoy," he adds to Dr. Cairns, "to meet Christian chemists, 

 and the pleasure is great when those who spend much of 

 the day burning incense before the idola tribus et specus, are 

 found to devote their most sacred hours to burning incense 

 of another kind, on another altar, to another God. It was 

 unexpectedly, and all the more delightfully, a time of great 

 spiritual refreshment, and I could have said, when I con- 

 trasted my expectation of a week of weary chemical hair- 

 splitting, with the actual week of profitable religious con- 

 versation and exercises, ' God is here, and I knew it not.' " 



His visit to London in May was followed by two months 

 of work. At their close we find him saying, " I am now 

 very jaded, and thankful to do as little as possible. This 

 is not the season of the year when even I generally cough, 

 but since April I have been coughing and blistering my 

 side ; and the stethoscopists talk ominously of some new 

 quarter of my damaged lungs where mischief is threatening 

 or begun. I have been running a race with Death since 

 I reached my majority, and he'll have the best of it before 

 long, if I don't get further ahead of him than I have been 

 recently able to do. There is this difference between con- 

 tending with moral and physical disease, that every victory 

 over the former makes you stronger for the next fight ; but 

 beaten or victorious in your battles with illness, you come 

 off permanently weakened." 



Having gone to Rothesay to recruit, he writes from it on 

 August 26th, evidently with effort, for the letters are crooked 

 and unshapely. " My sword-arm or pen-arm is suffering 

 from a wicked rheumatism, which makes writing an un- 

 welcome and rather scrawly performance, therefore my 

 words shall be few. ... In reply to your queries, let me 

 say that my lungs are fairly damaged in a new quarter, and 

 a worrying cough proclaims this, and adds to the trouble ; 



