The Tireless Brain

Our brains are seventy year clocks. The angel of life winds them up once for all, tlieu clones the oiso, and giveï the key into tho hand of tho angel of the resurrection. Tic-tao ! tictac! go the wheels of thought; our will cannot stop them; they canoot stop themselves; leep cannot still them ; madness only waken them go faster ; death alono can break into the case, ond, seizing the ever-swinging pendulum which we oall t!ie heart, silcnce at last the clicking of the terrible eseapement we have carried so long beontil our writikled foreheads. If we could only get at them, as we lie m our pillows count the dead beats of thougbt after thouglit, and image after imajre, jarrlng throu#h the evertiredurgm! Will io!:ody block tüose whecla, uncoup'e itiat pinion,. cut the strrif; tha! holds these weight8r blow up tlie iufcrr al machine wiih gunpowdeF? What a passion comes over etimetimes for tulenco and rest, - that Ibis dreadful meobauiím, unwinding tho end1 ss lapeftry of time, tmbruidered with spectral figures of lfu c.nl deuth, oould have but one brief holiday. Who can wonder tuat men will swing themselves off f'rom buanii in Lempen hisscn'3 ? tbat thnj jump off from parapets into the swift and gurgliog waters beneath ? tbat they take counsel uf the grim fiend who has but to utter his one peremptory monosyllable, and the restlesR machine isshivcred as a caso that is dahed upon a marble floor ? If anybody would really contrive some kind of a lever that one could tliruft in aniong the work of this horrid automaton and check them, or alter tbeir rate of (joing, what would the world give for the discovery ? Men are very npt to try to get it the machine by some indirect system or other. They chip on the brakes by meaus of opium, they change the maddening monotony of the rhytbm by means offüimented liquore, Itisbecause the brain is l"cked up and we caunot touch its movemeuts directly, that we thrust these eoarue tools iu through any crevice by which they may reach the interior, alter Uu rate of going for a wbile, and