AFTER RETURN HOME MARRIAGE 155 



in 1866 that my health suffered a more serious 

 breakdown than had happened to it before. During 

 the whole of this interval I find from old diaries that 

 I frequently suffered from giddiness and other maladies 

 prejudicial to mental effort, but that I invariably 

 became well again on completely changing my habits, 

 as by touring abroad and taking plenty of out-of-door 

 exercise. The warning I received in 1866 was more 



o 



emphatic and alarming than previously, and made a 

 revision of my mode of life a matter of primary im- 

 portance. Those who have not suffered from mental 

 breakdown can hardly realise the incapacity it causes, 

 or, when the worst is past, the closeness of analogy 

 between a sprained brain and a sprained joint. In 

 both cases, after recovery seems to others to be 

 complete, there remains for a long time an impossi- 

 bility of performing certain minor actions without 

 pain and serious mischief, mental in the one and 

 bodily in the other. This was a frequent experience 

 with me respecting small problems, which successively 

 obsessed me day and night, as I tried in vain to think 

 them out. These affected mere twigs, so to speak, 

 rather than large boughs of the mental processes, 

 but for all that most painfully. 



My own family became dispersed in four groups. 

 My mother and my sister Emma lived together in 

 Leamington, and their house became a second home 

 to my wife and myself. My mother always showed 

 the greatest affection to me throughout her long life, 

 which closed in 1874. After her death, the house 

 and garden devolved upon my sister Emma. She 

 cared for the interests of the family as a whole, and 

 for each of us severally. She was invaluable to my 



