into which fifty strangers might in the next day or two be buttoned, to using any vehicle belonging to the family, wrapped the hopeful youth up in a great coat and a cloak, and carried him off unresistingly to his residence in the High-street of Blissford; nor was it until the next morning that Master Tom clearly understood the character of his visit there; he was then enlightened by the enforcement of the severe discipline which had at first been ordered, and clearly comprehended that he had been sent away from home on purpose to be out of the way. The rage and passion of the young gentleman exceeded all bounds, and it required main force and the intervention of a strong lock to keep him where he was. At length, however, as the disorder advanced, his spirit sank, and he continued to take the medicines which were prescribed, and not take the food which was proscribed, with a sulky sullenness which, if not more amiable, was at least more endurable than his violence. At half-past seven o'clock on the evening of the departure of the amiable family and their charming friend, I became the father of a fine boy, pronounced by Mrs. Wells and the nurse to be as like me as possible. The Doctor looked pleased, and congratulating me with the greatest warmth, announced that which was the welcomest part of his important intelligence, that the mother and child were "as well as could be expected." THE REPROACH. BY MRS. ALEXANDER Kerr. Oh! thou hast wronged me! by each thought, each word And is it well of thee, that I, unheard, Must bear the anguish which my peace hath broken ? Dost thou not know how those, the fond, the true, Whose hearts have long been linked in Friendship's chain, In their own writhing breasts their deep and rankling pain? Some careless word to thee offence hath given, Some slight, some fancied wrong I never meant; And must the bonds of love thus, thus be riven The gather'd hopes be scatter'd, on which we fondly leant? LUNACY IN FRANCE.-NO. II. THE large square in which the female patients dwelt precisely resembled in form and extent that of the men, from which it was separated by a covered passage. A wide corridor ran all round, affording a sheltered walk: in the centre was a large grass-plot. The evening being beautiful, many were walking, not with the light and graceful step of most Frenchwomen, some in groups, others alone, with the sad and aimless pace which is never known in the streets and gardens of Paris. The greater portion might be termed incurables, yet the hope of final cure is rarely abandoned by Mon. E-, who will scarcely allow any one to be absolutely beyond relief and hope. Many were young, and had been happy; and were evidently taken from kind homes and exciting circles: they looked more like exiles than the men, and seemed to feel so. The face of the female maniac is more mangled by madness than that of the man, its grace and expression more utterly overthrown. The features of the gentlemen were but little ravaged by the mental disease; they often preserved their good and even agreeable looks; but in those of the ladies there was a wreck of comeliness, softness, and of all attraction. Of all human sorrows, not one surely is so wretched as to see the wife and mother visited by insanity: her heart growing cold to her children, her look wild and strange to her husband, and her beauty fading away like the moth,-the prey, mind and body, of this invisible fiend. No wonder that the ancient Hebrews believed almost all lunatic possessions to be the work of the devil: the looks of some of these ladies were demon-like, the play of their lips peculiarly disagreeable, and the laugh thrilling and cheerless. Their empire, like that of the king of Babylon, passes away from them when cast forth from their homes of love, and sway, and anxious cares: how few of these will ever say, "Mine understanding and my reason returned unto me!" From that potentate even to the present time, pride is perhaps the most fertile source of madness in women as in men, though in the former it besieges the brain through fewer avenues. Yet this master-passion was evinced the moment we entered the corridor, not against us men, for what did these ladies care for our hopes, ambitions, and vanities, which supplied no fuel to their desoJated feelings? but our companion was a handsomely-dressed woman, and her good looks and expensive array called forth at once every envious, jealous, evil feeling. It seemed to them a mockery on their own fallen state and humble appearance, for they were all in a plain garb just at this hour. Several gathered eagerly round the stranger, with flashing eyes, and looks full of all uncharitableness and malice. Had they been permitted, they would have laid violent hands on her, for they could not endure to see her walk thus among them, and would fain have despoiled the dress and ornaments. But for the evident anguish these ladies suffered at the sight, and the envenomed sallies in which it found vent, we could almost have laughed at their agitation. One of these was a young woman of about three-and-twenty, attended, as was every patient, by a servant, who was ever at her side: she had been good-looking, probably, ere the malady came; tall, and of a good figure; but madness sat upon the features, to which it gave a piteous expression. The circumstances of her family were affluent; of this she retained a vivid consciousness, and was intensely anxious that we should not think her poor. Perhaps the sight of the female visiter brought to mind her own days of pride and gaiety, of the toilet and its enjoyments; for, amidst all the vehemence of envy, she wept bitterly, and said many times, "My father and my family are rich, I also was rich do not think I am poor." And even when the 'object of dislike had disappeared, the dominant feeling of wounded pride was still awake; and addressing us for the last time, with clasped hands, a face bathed in tears, and an imploring attitude, " O, do not think me poor: I was rich once my family are still rich." She chanced, like her companions, to be clad in the plain and simple dress in which they go to the evening bath, and the sense of this was very aggravating to them, for they were exquisitely conscious of the disparity in their attire to that of the visiter. They are allowed to dress as their fancy inclines,-expensively, gaudily, or fantastically; a variety of tastes and fashions is often exhibited beneath the corridor, which is their daily promenade. They also frequented the winding alleys and beautiful grounds in which were the green mound and pleasure-house already described: here, but not at the hours when the male patients came, they often walked and sat: some peering wildly over the sweet scene as if in pursuit of a lost lover or child, and talking eagerly as they gazed; others musing complacently, it could scarcely be said thoughtfully, for thought was not often a familiar dweller in their aspect. Several hours were generally passed each day in the gardens, if the weather was not intolerable, and they were mostly willing, and often anxious, to take this exercise and recreation; whereas several of the men could with difficulty be persuaded at times to leave their chambers, and parted reluctantly from their occupations. The love of flowers was a great solace to a number of these ladies, a taste so generally cultivated and cherished by Parisian women, who are passionately fond of purchases and presents from the Marchés des Fleurs; their apartments are rarely without vases filled with choice plants and flowers. These insane ladies had brought this love to the Maison de Santé, and it was liberally administered to; many of their solitary chambers looked gay, and were perfectly fragrant: this was an unfailing and welcome relief to the thoughts; many an hour of the day was occupied in anxious attention to the favourite collection, altering its position, shifting it to the sun or shade. In the grounds there were beds of flowers, whose sight or fancied guardianship cheered many a lonely walk. Of what pleasure is this taste the source in every circumstance of life! even in the chamber of sickness, when the pots of flowers send their fragrance through the room, the thyme and rosemary strewed on the floor, the foliage of the trellised rose on which the sun is falling, are exquisitely welcome to the thoughts and senses, even though death be hovering near. They seem to be still more dear to the maniac, as if the rich hues and odours had a kind influence on the distempered fancy, and like a loved and familiar voice of former days, soothed its reveries and suspicions by some mysterious sympathy, some appealing sweetness or mercy known only to the sufferer. Many of the rooms were adorned with vases filled according to the tastes of the inmate, and various and capricious were these tastes. One lady, whose malady was of a mild and gentle character, was distinguished above the others in the array of her apartment. The window was open, and she looked forth occasionally on the patients who walked and talked without, and busied herself wholly in the care of her flowers; perhaps she spoke to, and held secret communion with them, for they were her chief companions from day to day; never mingling with the inmates, rarely going forth even to the pleasure-grounds, save to examine and sometimes rifle the parterre; her collection was her little world of being, of friendship, of interest, and perhaps of hope: they were carefully set forth in the window; the tables presented a rich array, as did the chimney-piece. We looked in at the display and the occupation. She was moving amidst them, like one intent on beautiful and precious things, like a mother amidst her infant children: her long and attenuated fingers, white as those of a corpse, looked more white and spectre-like as they handled the bright leaves and blossoms; her frame was wasted, and her countenance sad yet seemingly resigned; there was nothing of the wildness and constant restlessness so evident in those around her. She never spoke, save to herself, and then it was in soft tones, or rather whisperings, as if talking to those who could not answer her again. There were no books in the chamber, for she would not read; loving the one taste and occupation she had chosen better than any other. The quietude of this lady was strangely contrasted by the vehemence of a very young and pretty woman, the youngest of all the patients, who walked beneath the corridor with a ceaseless and rapid step; this was her daily habit; her step never relaxed in its quick, uninterrupted walk, from the time she left her apartment till her return to it, an interval of several hours. She spoke incessantly, her tongue moving as rapidly as her feet; she had resided here about three years; had been brought up in affluence, and well educated, but her parents had suffered a reverse of circumstances; the luxuries and enjoyments of home had passed away with their fortune, and the daughter was unable to bear the bitter reverse. The coldness of the world, the indifference of some intimates and friends, the estrangement of others, above all, the blight of her own ambitious hopes as to a flattering establishment in marriage, upset the mind. There had been, also, as is in many cases evident, a constitutional tendency, as well from bodily and mental sources, to derangement; but this tendency would probably have slept, as it sleeps in numbers, without being suspected, had not the wreck of fortune and hope called it forth. The features of this girl were soft and interesting; she had been much prettier when she entered the establishment, but her beauty had been injured, and her features partly distorted by the violent abuse in which she daily indulged; words the most intemperate fell in torrents from her lips, and sometimes they were of a kind which a young and handsome woman, if sane, would have shuddered to utter. A propensity to words and ideas the reverse of modest is by no means June.-VOL. L. NO. CXCVIII. N rare among the female patients; even from lips that could never before have violated delicacy, of the once gentle and guarded woman, it is strange to hear the language of licentiousness issuing with a zest and fluency as if they were not new sounds and thoughts, but that the fountains of former reveries, long suppressed, were broken up. The case of this girl was one of the most hopeless as well as desperate nature, though the tongue was her only instrument of mischief. The sudden and irrecoverable overthrow of her station and prospects in society disposed her spirit to evil, and that continually; it had no resting-place, but seemed to find, though new to vice and in its life's morn, a savage pleasure in venting its bitterness on others, and heaping all ills and calumnies on their heads. It must be confessed that woman is seen to less advantage in such an Asylum than man; there is more of the littleness of our nature peeping out; her helplessness is there without her attractions, for madness kills them; her rivalries, jealousies, and caprices, without the play of fancy and charm of tenderness that were their companions; in general without the relics and gloomy ruins of the strong intellect often preserved in men. The most hopeless effect of being crossed in passion is the moping and melancholy mood: it is the hardest to cure; there may be a few exceptions, who, like Ophelia, in the freshness of her love's blight, could sing sad songs, and call up wild and sweet images to their shattered thoughts: and thus, though rarely, a woman's madness shall become interesting. Even without poetry, Sterne invested his poor Maria with a touching interest: but she was a denizen of the wild, a wanderer by the stream and hill, who could be alive to the kind offices of others, and administer kindness in return. Whereas, in absolute lunacy, the sealing of the heart is often more fearful than the burial of the intellect. : There is perhaps one alleviation as to the softer sex, that the proportion of men under the power of this malady is in general the more numerous. This was the case in the period of the promulgation of the gospel during the mission of its divine Author, the lunatics brought to be healed were chiefly men: whatever the form and manner of the madness, helpless or ungovernable, the female subjects were comparatively rare. It has been thus in France, also, during the last ten or twelve years the political changes that have so often convulsed society, suddenly wrecked the well-founded ambition of the able, and blasted the delusive dreams of the weaker candidates; the revolutions that have disappointed the most bitterly those who were the movers, and ended a long-cherished hope in despair, have operated peculiarly and fatally on the minds of men. Fortunes lost in a few days, excellent appointments given to fierce political adversaries, influence and power changed into humiliation and poverty at a moment's warning. "I was returning from a ball at the Duchesse de said an eminent functionary to me; "and seeing some disorder in the streets, I walked in my ball dress to my office; armed men were guarding the door, who rudely told me to be gone, that my master's day was over." After the Cent Jours an unusual number of lunatics were admitted into the establishments of Paris; the greater number had long served in the army; all were furious, and few were cured. The spectacle of so much grandeur, so |