My dear Herbert,—­I am very sorry to hear you have been suffering from depression; it is one of the worst evils of life, and none the better for being so intangible.  I was reading a story the other day, in some old book, of a moody man who was walking with a friend, and, after a long silence, suddenly cried out, as if in pain.  “What ails you?” said his friend.  “My mind hurts me,” said the other.  That is the best way to look at it, I think—­as a kind of neuralgia of the soul, to be treated like other neuralgias.  A friend of mine who was a great sufferer from such depression went to an old doctor, who heard his story with a smile, and then said:  “Now, you’re not as bad as you feel, or even as you think.  My prescription is a simple one.  Don’t eat pastry; and for a fortnight don’t do anything you don’t like.”

It is often only a kind of cramp, and needs an easier position.  Try and get a little change; read novels; don’t get tired; sit in the open air.  “A recumbent position,” said a witty lady of my acquaintance, “is a great aid to cheerfulness.”

I used, as you know, to be a great sufferer; or perhaps you don’t know, for I was too miserable sometimes even to speak of it.  But I can say humbly and gratefully that a certain freedom from depression is one of the blessings that advancing years have brought me.  Still, I don’t altogether escape, and it sometimes falls with an unexpected suddenness.  It may help you to know that other people suffer similarly, and how they suffer.

Well, then, a few days ago I woke early, after troubled dreams, and knew that the old enemy had clutched me.  I lay in a strange agony of mind, my heart beating thick, and with an insupportable weight on my heart.  It always takes the same form with me—­an overwhelming sense of failure in all that I attempt, a dreary consciousness of absolute futility, coupled with the sense of the brevity and misery of human life generally.  I ask myself what is the use of anything?  What is an almost demoniacal feature of the mood is that it lays a spell of utter dreariness upon all pleasures as well as duties.  One feels condemned to a long perspective of work without interest, and recreation without relish, and all confined and bounded by death; whichever way my thoughts turned, a grey prospect met me.

Little by little the misery abated, recurring at longer and longer intervals, till at last I slept again; but the mood overclouded me all day long, and I went about my duties with indifference.  But there is one medicine which hardly ever fails me—­it was a half-holiday, and, after tea, I went to the cathedral and sate in a remote corner of the nave.  The service had just begun.  The nave was dimly lighted, but an upward radiance gushed behind the screen and the tall organ, and lit up the vaulted roof with a tranquil glory.  Soon the Psalms began, and at the sound of the clear voices of the choir, which seemed to swim on the melodious thunder of the organ,