found. If this be a true definition, what a frightful number of incarcerated brains are immured! May not the keys be found? Montesquieu said-" When God created the brains of human beings, He did not intend to guarantee them.'

As it is well observed in the Journal of Psychological Medicine, for July, 1857-"The poor over-wrought brain, meets with but little attention and consideration when in a state of incipient disorder. The faintest scintillation of mischief progressing on the lungs, liver, and stomach, immediately awakens alarm, and medical advice and treatment are eagerly sought; but serious, wellmarked symptoms of brain disorder, are often entirely overlooked and neglected; such affections frequently being permitted to exist for months, without causing the faintest shadow of uneasiness or apprehension in the mind. of the patient or his friends. Morbid alterations of temper, depression of spirits, amounting sometimes to melancholia, headache, severe giddiness, inaptitude for business, loss of memory, confusion of mind, defective power of mental concentration, the feeling of brain lassitude and fatigue, excessive ennui, a longing for death, a want of interest in pursuits that formerly were a source of gratification and pleasure, restlessness by day, and sleeplessness by night,-all obvious indications of an unhealthy state of the functions of the brain and nervous system, rarely, if ever, attract attention until the unhappy invalid, becoming unequivocally deranged, commits an overt act of suicide. Then the exclamation is, "poor fellow, his mind has been affected for months," and no

one expresses any surprise that he should, in such a state of mental disorder, have hung himself, or cut his throat. It is difficult to induce the public to take a common-sense and right view of this important subject; for if the saving of life is the object, it is to the public mind we must plainly address ourselves. If a person in a state of mental and bodily health, is conscious that abnormal changes are taking place in the mind, that trifles worry and irritate, that the brain is evidently unfit for work, that the spirits are flagging, that all the evils of life are magnified; if he is disposed to be fanciful, imagining things to exist that have no existence apart from himself; believing that his kind friends ill use and slight him; if symptoms like these, or analogous to these, are associated with headache, derangement of the stomach and liver, and want of continuous sleep, the patient may assure himself that the state of the brain is abnormal, and requires careful consideration. Had poor Hugh Miller been pulled up earlier from this strata, in the depth of the red sea, placed himself early under medical discipline, and suspended his one over-wrought section of the sensorium, in all probability his tottering intellect would have had a longer reprieve. Why aid our own destruction? No man can be happy who allows his mind to range with unrestrained indulgence upon one theme. The disuse or abolition of the other faculties willingly suppressed, must end in their becoming torpid, inert, and purposeless, to the total extinction of pleasure from any source. This is indeed, self-love in a mistake: we would allow the mind the greatest latitude of compass from "lively to severe," rather than have

to do with a headstrong unyielding child, who doggedly concentrates all his powers to one idea; for in the end he does not perceive the evil that he does, no matter that it recoils with fearful impetus upon himself and his neighbours; he nourishes the viper that wounds him, hugs it to his bosom, and the harder it stings him, the more he adores the delusive serpent; and for this reason, he is to every man of common sense, necessarily the dupe and victim of mistake, the result of long ignorance and error.

man.

This torpor of soul and body can only be removed by constant change of scene, occupation, lively companions, a determinination to run for your life from ennui, and escape from the giant idol self. The bane and antidote lie before us: it is a paradox in the moral constitution of He follows what he knows to be a delusion with as much eagerness as if he knew it to be a reality. Let us all beware how we circle in a stream that should be progressive and adaptive: if we do, we have no legitimate right to complain if from stagnation our bodies and minds become muddy, stale, flat, and unprofitable, generating miasma, and all manner of malarious evils so pestilential, that all who love life, and try to do their duty, shun the deadly vapour. If men would follow nature instead of custom, they would seldom err. A distinguished hydropathist propounds a new medicine:-"This infallible remedy for melancholy is made of fun and fresh air, in equal proportions, and is to be taken with cold water three times a day." The experience of life is expressed by Punch in the reflection-"What a fool I have been." "You are very stupid, John," said a country teacher to a

little boy eight years old: "you are like a donkey; and what do they do to cure him of his stupidity?" "Why, they feed him more and kick him less," said the little urchin.

Fear is implanted in us, says Johnson, as a preservative from evil; but its duty, like other passions, is not to overbear reason, but assist it, nor should it be suffered to tyrannise over the imagination, to raise phantoms of horror, or beset life with supernumary distress. To be always afraid of losing life, is indeed scarcely to enjoy a life that can deserve the care of preservation. He that once indulges idle fears, will never be at rest. Our present state admits only of a kind of negative security; we must conclude ourselves safe when we see no danger. Death, indeed, hovers about us; but hovers commonly unseen, unless we sharpen our sight by useless curiosity. Truly and beautifully it has been said, that "the veil which covers futurity has been woven by the hand of mercy." It is, however, one of the proud conceits of frail humanity, that every man believes himself to be more miserable than another wretch, who may happen to be weeping and groaning at his elbow. Such is the complicated constitution of human nature, that a man without a predominant inclination, is not likely to be either useful or happy but, be it observed, that monomania, mania, &c., ought only to be employed as representing degrees and stages of inflammation of the brain, and that what ever strongly excites the mind or its organ, whether it be strong, or intense feeling, tends to produce the awful calamity.

A man

Baxter's general rules have long been ours. who is cold, should labour till heat be extracted; so he that wants assurance, must not stand still, but exercise his graces till his doubts vanish. The want of consolation in the soul, it is now pretty well known, is very commonly owing to bodily melancholy. It is no more wonderful for a conscientious man under melancholy, to doubt, fear, and despair, than for a sick man to groan, or a child to cry when it is chastised. Without the physician in this case, the labour of the divine is usually in vain; you may silence, but you cannot comfort them. You may make them confess they have some grace, and yet not bring them to comfortable conclusions. Had Hugh Miller, Turner the artist, Chatterton, cum multis aliis, in countless numbers, of the same temperament and texture of mind, fully understood the modus operandi of incessant mental toil upon one subject for years together, we should not have had such tragic results brought before our notice. It is sufficiently obvious to every one, without reference to any greater authority than common sense, that the physical and moral reciprocate their lights on each other; the mutual affinities of which, we trust, are made traceable and apparent: whence it follows, the true cultivation of either department will illustrate the other, and that the multiform ills working flesh is heir to, by reason of its labour, are due to one common adequate cause,—the breach of physical laws, by fealty to which humanity holds vigour and life; yet no subject is regarded with more apathy and indifference. The overstraining of a sense, the inhalation of unwholesome air, or a too-sedentary

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