AFTER RETURN HOME-MARRIAGE
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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 emphatic and alarming than previously, and made a revision of my mode of life a matter of primary importance. 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 impossibility 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 nmther ,tnd my sister lamina lived together in
LtatmingLono anti their hotvw bc(_"a1Jw a secon(] 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
