the elephant that supports the world, must have something upon which to support himself.

Now the Scotch-philosophy, as our Author terms it, and at which he is so exceedingly angry, both in its sum and substance confesses that ignorance, which good sense and correct views of the subject compel to the confession of; and having ascertained the limits of human intelligence, it ceases to worry itself with attempts to pass those limits,-attempts which must always be fruitless; and it confines itself to the generalisation, and classification of those facts which are constantly presenting themselves to the eye of observation. It is, indeed, inductive philosophy, which nature owns, and which truth approves. But we must check our disposition to illustrate and confirm the validity of these statements, and hasten to the more particular consideration of the work before us.

Our Author divides his subject into four parts. In the first part, he endeavours to make out his proposition, that insanity has always corporal disease for its foundation. In the second division of his treatise, he attempts to prove that all the varieties of mental aberration, are divisible into two leading species; viz. the Sthenic, and the Asthenic; and that the mania of writers is applicable to the former, melancholic, to the latter, Thirdly, he tries to prove that madness is not, in the proper sense of the word, an hereditary disease. And, finally, he maintains that it is as generally curable as any of those violent diseases which are most successfully treated by medicine,

It requires a person to be but in a small degree conversant in the usual tenor of reasoning on these subjects, to perceive that the present writer is greatly at issue with most of those who have preceded him on the same subject; and although we purposely defer our remarks on the composition of the treatise till the conclusion of our analysis, we shall here just observe, that it possesses an independence of manner, as well as an originality of matter, which, although it may fail to convince, cannot fail to interest.

We shall preface our further strictures with an unqualified concession, that bodily disorganization is demonstrably, in many instances, productive of mental aberration; and we are ready also to admit, that hallucination of the intellect must always bring with it some corporal condition, different from what would have existed under circumstances of sanity: but still, we must maintain the secondary nature, in many instances, of the bodily change. Nay, we are bold to assert that almost the first example which the Author adduces in support of his hypothesis, gives, to say the least of it, some weight to the opposite side of the question. The narration is as follows.

A gentleman who received a severe bite from a dog, soon affer fancied the animal was mad; he felt a horror at the sight of liquids, and was actually convulsed on attempting to swallow them. So uncontrollable were his prepossessions, that Mr. Hunter conceived he would die, had not the dog which inflicted the wound, been fortunately found, and brought into his room in perfect health; this soon restored his mind to a state of tranquillity; the sight of water no longer affected him, and he quickly recovered.' p. 33.

Here, surely, was a bodily disorder produced by a mental cause; and no one will be inclined to dispute that the sight of the animal in health, operated more effectually in dissolving the morbid concatenation, than remedies of a physical nature would have done. The insane and the sane states, were both brought about by an originally mental operation; and the return to health was subsequent, instead of precursory, to the return of sanity. In other words, the bodily change came after the mental; a succession of events, contrary to the order of our Author's theory.

In pursuit of his subject, Mr. Hill refers to the phenomena of memory, as a further evidence of the mental faculties and affections being actually a part of the material organization. For cur own parts, however, we have always thought that this is one of the weakest positions upon which to make a stand in defence of materialism. Physiology has furnished evidence of an unceasing mutation in the parts of a living organized body. In this constant cliange of particles, indeed, consist the essence of vitality, and its difference from inert, unorganized matter. Now the perceptive and retaining faculties are developed through the instrumentality of the brain and nerves: yet the brain and nerves of the man of forty, are not the brain and nerves of the same individual at twenty: notwithstanding which, intellectual identity remains, consciousness is preserved, and the recollection of past events is retained. Nay, further, as the individual advances in life, and the susceptibility of the intellectual organs, becomes blunted by age, so that new impressions are received obtusely, and retained with difficulty, the impressions of former years are now often renovated to so great a degree, that age becomes a second childhood in more senses than one. Yet who will maintain the bodily identity of the two states of infancy and old age? Organization and intellect are, therefore, distinct and independent things. Memory is no modification of matter, and no matter what it is: a true philosophy teaches us that we have no business with its essence; it is for us to investigate only its laws. Describing the state of insanity, our Author says,

Insanity unfolds, as it were, the just texture of every understanding it has attacked, and during its presence strips it of all adventitious appendages; all such circumstances are now suspended, or

+

thrown into shade, and the human mind becomes exhibited to the sagacious observer in its true colours; whatever original constitution, education, and habit, have made it, all is now laid bare, every latent thought is sooner or later disclosed with undisguised truth; hence it is that attendants upon lunatics make discoveries of thought, intentions, and correspondent actions, of which they had no previous knowledge, or even apprehended had an existence!' p. 39.

We think this statement is, in some measure, erroneous; and it is most assuredly inconsistent with the writer's own notions respecting the production of the disease. Arrant hypocrisy we allow to be too characteristic of man. Sin has so marred ereation, that the very essence of society-of polished society in particular-has come to be made up of artifice, and concealment, and fraud: still we cannot be brought to consider the maniacal, to be the real state of the mind. Let the above statement be contrasted with the following extract, and Mr. Hill, to be consistent with himself, must allow the retiring modesty of the accomplished woman,' mentioned in the last paragraph of the extract, to be a mere cloak to conceal the basest propensities of human nature.

That the general symptoms mentioned above will terminate in a Sthenic attack, is known by an unusual and remarkable inequality of temper and spirits, or a manifest tendency to an exactly opposite conduct to the accustomed one. In males from temperance to excess, from a mild demeanour, to a lofty, overbearing, dictatorial manner; from civility of manners, to hauteur and self-consequence; from avarice, to generosity, and vice-versa; from energy, and fearlessness of conduct, to indecision and latent cowardice. In females, the change is marked from their habits of seclusion, and domestic occupancy, being converted into a rambling visitation of all their intimates, and a disposition to convert a very slight acquaintance into an intimate friend. An increasing boldness, and unseemly audacity usurps the place of that retiring modesty, which heretofore endeared the conduct of the accomplished woman. A coarseness of manners bordering on indelicacy is gradually evolved.' p. 242.

In justice to ourselves, we must remark that the want of consistency displayed in these two accounts, is not noticed in the spirit of hypercritical cavil, but with a view to obviate any distressing misconception in the mind of an individual, which might happen upon the supposition that a person had not assumed his genuine character till the mask of sanity had been torn away :that he was not a true man till he had become a maniac!

So widely indeed does fact differ from the above representation of our Author, respecting the development of latent disposition during insanity, that the exact contrary is a matter of almost universal notoriety. It happens especially to medical practitioners, often to witness, that, even in the delirium and

temporary insanity accompanying febrile and some other acute diseases, the whole man shall be totally transformed. We have ourselves seen instances of a delicacy which had been carried to an almost morbid extreme, being converted, under the circumstances supposed, into grossness and indelicacy, both of demeanour and expression; and we have had still more lamentable occasions to observe even exemplars of morality and religious rectitude, changed, by mental disorder, into revellers, so to speak, in vicious and profane discourse. So precarious is the tenure of the most noble possession of man! So much does it behove him to put the talent intrusted to his use, to a good account, "while it is called to day!" and so cruelly harsh, we may add, are those inferences which are sometimes made of what the man has been, from what he is now! The athletic and robust, by fractured limbs, or diseased bodies, are rendered equally impotent, with the feeble and delicate; and what can be expected from the acutest understanding, or most correct mind, when that mind has become disjointed and broken?

We now proceed to some observations on our Author's second division of his subject.

We are happy in having it in our power to recommend an attentive perusal of the first section of this second chapter, to all who are attached to the system of venesection, which has, we are sorry to say, become too prevalent in the modern practice of medicine. The two states of Sthenia and Asthenia, are here, as in other parts of the work, marked out with a degree of precision, which is, in some respects, perhaps, unfounded and deceptive; yet still we feel conscious, that much and serious mischief, has grown out of the neglect to notice the prevailing diathesis in mental sufferings. Mania and melancholia, however, we deem improper, and practically injurious designations, of the Sthenic and Asthenic states. These two conditions of the same disease not only alternate their states in a manner different from the frequent conversion of Sthenia into Asthenia, but the highest and most obstinate degree of Melancholia, is often grafted upon a system where great and Sthenic excitement prevails.

Two succeeding sections of this chapter are devoted to the description and history of the Sthenic, or high form of insanity; and the features of the dreadful malady are evidently delineated by the hand of an able and very experienced artist So much were we struck with the fidelity and force of some of the colouring in this part of the work, that, had it been consistent with our limits, we should here readily have transcribed several pages of description.

From the Sthenic, our Author proceeds to an account of the Asthenic, or Melancholic, species of the disease; and here again

we detect the prevailing tendency of his mind to attribute all to organic læsion, raising this from its frequent situation of effect, into the rank of cause. 'Debility,' he says, with the læsion of some important organ, is the foundation of this form of mental aberration. Many of our readers are aware, that on the circunstance of that visceral affection which accompanies the complaint, being a precursor or successor of the attack, has been founded the distinction of the schools between Hypochondriasis and Melancholia-vera ; a distinction which the present Author's principles would lead him to disregard, but which, we think, notwithstanding, to be founded on truth.

We may here complain of a want of definition of madness, founded upon its peculiar characteristics; and although to describe, is, in the general way, better than to define, yet still, neglecting to point out the essentials of the insane state, may lead to serious error; when it is our wish to determine on its actual existence. It is often, as we shall see hereafter, of great moment to be able to draw the line with decision and nicety, between the sound and the unsound mind; and towards enabling us to effect this, it will then appear how important an accurate definition of the constituents of the state may sometimes prove. One clew, however, to this secret, is furnished by the following statement. A renewed impression, without the presence of the original object in a sane mind, is never so vivid as the original, but in an insane mind, the reverse is the fact.' And again: They (the subjects of the disease) take no note of time, for this is an act of sanity; but time passed during insanity is a period of non-existence." These are statements which stand confirmed with melancholy force by the two following' cases; the one extracted from a periodical publication, the other narrated by the Author himself

A gentleman on the point of marriage, left his intended bride for a short time; he usually travelled in the stage coach to the place of her abode; the last journey he took from her was the last of his life. Anxiously expecting his return, she went to meet the vehicle. An old friend announced to her the death of her lover; she uttered an involuntary sercam and piteous exclamation," he is dead." From this fatal moment, for fifty years, has this unfortunate female daily, in all seasons, traversed the distance of a few miles to the spot where she expected her future husband to alight from the coach, uttering in a plaintive tone, "he is not come yet-I will return tomorrow." P. 105.

A young robust divine was one wintry day employed in snipeshooting with a friend: in the course of their perambulations, high hedge intervened between the companions. The friend fired at a bird which sprang unexpectedly up, and lodged a part of the shot in the forchead of the clergyman; he instantly fell, and did not recover