women, and carriages, are huddled together, impeding each other, and great vigilance is necessary to escape danger. Through the middle of the city, running east and west, is a street as wide as Broadway, called the Boulevards, and in different quarters are elegant gardens, such as the Palais Royal, the Tuilleries, and the Luxembourg. In these choice places, the elegance and fashion of the metropolis are assembled. the street is an everlasting rumbling of carriages at all hours, night and day; and the whole day there is one general cry of hoarse and screaming voices of men and women selling their wares, or reading proclamations to the crowd. The first week of my stay, I attended business, and looked at curiosities. I felt generally a kind of giddiness, like one half drunk,* and retired every night greatly fatigued to my room, where my acquaintances were a couple of chairs, a mahogany table, and brick floor, (the common fashion of the city.) It is a truth pretty well tested, but not always attended to, that, especially at my age, the inveterate habits of life cannot be changed without violence. I had been all my life at home, always with intimate friends, and a large family gathered about me in the evening. Locum non animum mutant, qui trans mare currunt, is an old line of Horace, which I now understand better than at the academy. The second week passed like the first, and the third came upon me with a load of blue devils. I went out to hunt acquaintance, and present a few of my letters. I had a polite bow, an amiable smile, very happy if I can serve you' and there the acquaintance ended. This, I find, where no interests are concerned, is all that can be expected from a letter of introduction; and in a large world like this, where so many fools like myself are daily coming to town,' no more should be expected.

Still haunted by the blue devils, I set out one bright morning, being resolved to give sorrow to the winds. I looked up at Napoleon's statue on the column of the Place Vendome, and thought of his troubles. What were my petty infelicities to his? Fortifying myself with the comparison, I travelled on magnanimously, and called upon my old friend Du - I found him in the mad-house. There he was, with tears on his cheeks, talking his nonsense. Here was another lesson. I had known him prosperous, and in the full possession of all his faculties. I now saw him under the most distressing affection to which poor human nature is liable. I trudged a mile or two, through a long lane of a street, where the sun had never shone, till I reached the Seine. A little white house stood by the river side. I entered it (many people going in and out,) from curiosity, and here I saw three dead persons stretched upon black marble tables. They were suicides. Several of these poor wretches are brought here daily, and exposed three days and nights, for recognition by their friends, or acquaintances. I soon quitted this ill-omened and gloomy place. I returned fatigued and dispirited to my room; broke my watch by accident on the hard floor, upset my table in the dark, and broke the same; crawled to bed, and passed the night in a high fever. Woke in

*Campbell, in a paper on London, published some years ago in the New Monthly Magazine, makes a similar observation respecting the effects of sight-seeing, upon strangers in the British capital. Several cases of insanity, of considerable continuance, had been traced to that cause. EDITORS KNICKERBOCKER.

the morning unable to rise, with my porter for my sick-nurse, one of that class of servants, common here, who would not scruple to assist a stranger into another world, that they might appropriate to themselves the little things he may leave in this. Drugged myself, with a physi

cian to help me, for a week, ere I was well.

What a delightful thing it is to travel in foreign countries! Do not fear, from what I have said, that I am declining; for Jeremiah, who made great lamentations, lived to a good old age. I have plucked up courage and health, and read old Seneca, a kind of medicine that I often take as nervous women do elixir.

Adieu!

THOUGHTS ON INSANITY.

BY WILLIAM RUSH, M. D.

It may be said with truth, that the mind of man contains within itself the materials of his happiness and misery. The author of nature sent him into existence with capacity to receive impressions through his senses, which were ultimately to accomplish the design of making him happy, amidst the heterogeneous elements in which it was his destiny to be cast. This great result was the human mind; a work worthy of the Creator without fault-beyond criticism — in a word, as pure as the tenement selected for its abode. This innate capacity man saw was of slow growth, affording him a moral, that all which is good and great in this world is reached only by the hand of Time. He saw the shortlived intellect of the brute, and its offspring acquiring, in a moment, (as it were,) by the magic of instinct, all the habitudes of its parent. He wondered at, more than reasoned upon, these phenomena, until progressive lessons of knowledge taught him, that the Creator sheds the same intellectual light and shade upon animated nature, as he did with his first subtle agent upon the beautiful landscape of earth.

The thoughts here hastily thrown out, are limited to the consideration of some of the facts developed by the human mind in infancy, and in manhood, the inferences deduced from these facts offering an explanation of the causes which lead remotely to the severest of man's afflictions - Insanity. The elements of the mind are as pure as the source whence they sprung: and God saw every thing that he had made, and behold, it was very good. How is it then, by worldly influences, that these sacred elements of wisdom, virtue, and happiness, often fall so far short of their original intent?-planned by omnipotence foiled by finite agency! The Creator, in full knowledge of the fitness of things, gave man his senses, and placed him among the outward phenomena of nature, an inheritance sufficiently large to meet every demand of humanity. What more could man have asked for?- or ought he to have been originally possessed of? -- since so much of his existence was to be consumed in gradually moulding these early impressions from outward objects into the form of mind.

This result, we have said, is the work of time — and wisely so; for we cannot imagine a condition of existence more painful, than a want of exact ratio between the power of external agents to excite impressions, and the capacity of the senses to receive them. Hence the propriety of withholding sudden excess in the objects of the senses, from an infant. Perhaps crying, the universal accident of infancy, in itself useful, in its action upon the organs of respiration and speech, may arise from the sharp impressions made by external agents upon the newly-created and delicate senses. It would be a difficult task, and one foreign to our thoughts, to mark the era when Reason assumes her absolute sway over the attributes of the mind. There are children occasionally to be met with, who, instead of slowly receiving the elements of knowledge, seem, as it were, to have 'stolen a march' upon time, and placed themselves in advance of God's great design. Such children, it is said, do not live long; and if they do, Nature's early and extravagant outlay is seldom

returned with proportional interest, at maturity. Like animals in oxygen air, they appear to live too fast-consuming in a moment the provision of a life-time. In our present ignorance of every capability of matter acting in concert with the elements of mind, we refer these occurrences to the exceptions of Nature's general rule; though perhaps when the light of future knowledge shall strike this subject with full effect, the minds of these youthful human anomalies will be better analyzed and understood.

The progressive action of external agents upon the senses, produce in good time two attributes of mind eminently conspicuous in children — memory and imagination - blessings wisely intended for their pleasure and improvement. Infants soon know their parents and nurses, and readily distinguish the faces, and even the voices, of those about them; and when older, who has not seen these little merry creatures at play, dressing themselves, or perhaps a favourite dog, or kitten, in the most ludicrous and fanciful attire? Small as these mental resources appear, yet they are the foundation of knowledge-the day-break of imagination. Children at an early age eagerly pursue the knowledge of things. Their inquisitiveness is proverbial, and their memories are usually retentive, which readily leads them to an acquaintance with the relationships of objects around them: but their imaginations are active, oftener taking the lead of, than following, their progressive steps of knowledge. Hence their fear, and a predilection for the marvellous, so universally observable in young people. The mind, too, in its present state, soon learns to frame analogies between physical and moral objects. What delicate machinery to handle and put together! What an important trust to commit to the care of Education! When the infant's school shall be the nursery, and home the most enticing spot to children, then may we not hope to see God's final purpose with the human mind, attained? This is the period in the existence of children, when watchful and intelligent parents, with mild yet uncompromising purpose, should devote their energies to perfect the task which Nature has begun. Now is the time to plant wellselected seeds of knowledge in the minds of their offspring. They will grow luxuriantly, for the soil is rich, and not preoccupied. Let parents cultivate it with their own hands, that when the harvest of virtue and happiness is ripe in their children, they may reap, and share with them the high reward of true parental affection. Heathen mythology had countless advisers upon the plan of man's prospective happiness. The wise and virtuous sons of Greece and Rome were swayed by its councils. It perished, and lives only in the memory of man. In harmony with the laws of the universe, it was eclipsed by the simplicity of the Christian system of religion, which proclaims that one God, with two self-emanations, are enough to secure the temporal and eternal welfare of man. With reverence to the analogy which God has here given us, may we not, upon the subject of human education, adopt the reflection of his wisdom, and endeavour to perfect his scheme of mental improvement, by intrusting it only to the enlightened and accomplished few?

It is almost impossible to keep thought a prisoner. Our own has already escaped, in taking a hasty glance at education: we hope it may reach the reflection of abler minds.

Whatever may be the best means of attaining the ends of education, certain it is, that in proportion as the elements of youthful intellect are

subjected to proper culture, the same will be its reward, not only in useful stores of knowledge, but in treasures of virtue and happiness. Thus imbibed, knowledge sets so strong a foundation for a fabric of mind, that the moral vicissitudes of after life can seldom shake or destroy it. We do not assert the fact, for we cannot perceive that insanity, so called, except in its generic sense, is a disease of childhood - though, perhaps, as with things occasionally before our eyes, we do not see them, because we do not look for them. Children, like insane persons, sing and talk to themselves, imagine themselves what they are not-fancy that their playthings are sensible, and scold and punish them—and when alone, or in presence of their parents, with artless manner, and innocent prattle, imitate all the common courtesies of refined life: not even familiar company restrains these youthful aberrations of mind. Reason seldom entirely forsakes the lunatic in the hospital: its overthrow, like that of a government, always leaves an impress behind it, and in its advances to the human mind, as a 'coming event, casts its shadow before.' Here there are two conditions of the mind different in locality, but both without the governing influence of reason. It is true, that the symptoms of aberration of mind which we have mentioned as occurring in children, are corrected by age. These associations, also, are constantly broken up by the rules of discipline to which they are subjected by their parents, and which they fear to disobey. Their tender years render them pliant to authority, a natural reason why caution should be used in the exercise of this power. But what would be the effect upon their minds of keeping up the train of thought and action just mentioned? Their fancies would not perhaps run on to positive insanity, because their minds are constantly engaged with new delights, which nature and art have set before them. They have but little reflection: besides, children, when judiciously indulged, are always happy. This breathes a calm upon the excited elements of their minds, that prepares their attention for the voice of Reason. But the lunatic, with every door of usefulness closed upon him, shut out from a world no longer willing to tolerate him, his overgrown thoughts struggling to burst the cerements of the brain, venting themselves in wildness of speech — his impressions from without, grown stale with frequent and unprofitable use, driving him to the inward revelry of the mind- once perhaps the pride of a kingdom, now the pity of the subject - dead to novelty and amusement with no parent's voice to recal his thoughts to order, relatives and friends are hateful to him, and he an object of terror to them. The streams of affection that flow from these sources, dry up in him; and in a word, in self-forgetfulness, he is forgotten. What chance has he of regaining the light of reason? Even the physician, in the noble efficiency of his art, called in perhaps too late to this sad moral spectacle, often views it with little prospect of successful issue. He is ignorant of its forming stages. These may have existed from childhood. Cause and effect are now so blended together, that they elude his scrutiny-defy his moral correction - and, like an implacable enemy, no longer personally fit to deal with, he seeks to make peace with his patient's mind through the avenues of his body. By these means, at first, and afterward skilfully combining them with moral treatment, he is often enabled to gain access to, and influence over the minds of the insane. In what does his moral treatment consist? Conjoined with physical means, he oblite