As far as my experience goes, the use of stimulants enables one at moments of severe bodily exhaustion to make mental efforts of which, but for them, he would be absolutely incapable. For instance, after a long day's ride in the burning sun across the dry stony wastes of Northern Persia, I have arrived in some wretched, mud-built town, and laid down upon my carpet in the corner of some miserable hovel, utterly worn out by bodily fatigue, mental anxiety, and the worry inseparable from constant association with Eastern servants. It would be necessary to write a long letter to the newspapers before retiring to rest. A judicious use of stimulants has, under such circumstances, not only given me sufficient energy to unpack my writing materials, lie on my face, and propped on both elbows, write for hours by the light of a smoky lamp; but also produced the flow of ideas that previously refused to come out of their mental hiding places, or which presented themselves in a flat and uninteresting form. I consider, then, the use of alcoholic and other stimulation to be conducive to literary labours under circumstances of physical and mental exhaustion; and very often the latter is the normal condition of writers, especially those employed on the press. Perhaps, too, in examining into the nature of some metaphysical and psychological questions the use of alcohol, or some similar stimulant, aids the appreciation of nuances of thought which might otherwise escape the cooler and less excited brain. On the other hand, while travelling in the East during the past few years, and when, as a rule, circumstances precluded the possibility of obtaining stimulants, I found that a robust state of health consequent on an out-door life, made the consumption of alcohol in any shape quite unnecessary. In brief, then, my opinion is, that at a given moment of mental depression or exhaustion, the use of stimulants will restore the mind to a condition of activity and power fully equalling, and in some particular ways, surpassing its normal state. Subsequently to the dying out of the stimulation the brain is left in a still more collapsed situation than before, in other words, must pay the penalty, in the form of an adverse reaction, of having overdrawn its powers, for having, as it were, anticipated its work.

E. O'DONOVAN. Feb. 17, 1882.