specified will need line upon line. It sometimes happens that they whom the higher motive fails to influence, will yield to the lower. On the ground of self-interest, therefore, is our appeal to such. "Emerald green," says a physician, "is exceedingly injurious to the wearer. Head-ache, and sometimes erysipelas, is the unsuspected result of green wreaths." From our own observation, we can attest that they cause the hair to fall off, and produce eruption on the forehead-an unsightly appearance, you will allow. Besides, they are dangerous even in a dustbin; and should your child by chance lay hold on one, and, as he naturally would, put it to his mouth, death would inevitably ensue. We have known ladies to decline purchases of this kind on account of their cheapness. The article is pretty, but from its low price it is suspected to be inferior. The West-end tradesmen know this very well, and make considerable capital of this scrap of observation. Did you demur to the beautiful wreath because it was "Only two and sixpence ?" Be it known that I can purchase its exact counterpart for considerably less, somewhere else. objection of cheapness deter a few in such a purchase, let all the fashionable world know, that emerald green is CHEAP-cheap, though human lives are expended in its production: for flesh and blood are cheap; though actual labor is not underpaid, health, and youth, and happiness may be commanded for nothing. If the simple, truthful delineation of human suffering fail to awaken general, practical sympathy, what else can be urged? "The quality of mercy is not strained;" it comes down gently as the dew; and not the earth, cleft by drought into a thousand fissures, needs genial rain more than do the weary and heavy-laden among those who minister to our necessities unobserved, and in the distance call for the interposition of holy mercy. Let it be borne in mind, that every purchaser of the noxious material is the agent of a real, appreciable infliction of suffering, which will be felt somewhere and when the beautiful wreaths compel our admiration and cause us to hesitate, let us not close our ear to the monition-"This is the price of blood!” : XLIV.-A JUNE MORNING. THE martyr Poppy burned away With a self-kindled flame. The royal beauty of the Rose The golden Lilly held its urn But both, when sunset fades to night, The Honeysuckle raised in air Its thousand little rosy horns, That the kind Sun with honey fills This fragrant June's exulting morns. There from his nest the Throstle sees The banquet of a thousand Bees. WALTER THORNBURY. XLV.-TÆDIUM VITÆ. "CREATION'S Over-man, you know, Was God's last work-each wind that blows The million millionth Rose." Bah! you but skim the sea of truth- Hope blooms anew in every See this broad Sycamore; each leaf And mark these white stars in the grass, Our Arts may die—but Nature works Nothing is old, my weary friend; The world has an eternal youth, New Beauty, Wisdom, Love, and Truth. WALTER THORNBURY. XLVI.-OUR SHADOW. IT falls before, it follows behind, And never shadow without the light. It walks when we walk, it runs when we run, Yet it tells which way to look for the sun,— Ever mingles the light and shade, Which makes this human world so dear; And what were a hope without a fear? A morning shadow o'er youth is cast, XLVII.-" THOUGH THIS BE MADNESS, YET THERE'S METHOD IN IT." Six months ago, the attention of the High Court of Chancery, of an army of lawyers, and of the gossip-loving public, was intently turned to the question whether a certain young gentleman, undeniably possessed of more money than abilities, should be classed among the insane. Strenuous were the efforts made to prove that "madness in great ones must not unwatched go;" but the effective distinction maintained by Dr. Conolly betw een recklessness and a disordered brain, procured the re-installation of the young gentleman into his rights of liberty, and such remnants of property as the procedure was supposed to leave him master of. Amidst the universal debate and numerous references made at the time to medical authority, we do not remember to have heard or seen the title of a very remarkable and interesting work published last year in Paris: "La Folie Lucide étudiée et considérée au point de vue de la Famille et de la Société. Par le Docteur Trélat, Médecin à l'Hospice de la Salpêtrière; Ancien Médecin préposé à l'examen des aliénés recueillis chaque jour par l'administration; Ancien Membre du Conseil de Salubrité du Département de la Seine." This book, as its name implies, is not a merely scientific treatise suited for the use and guidance of scientific or professional men. Les aliénés lucides, defined by M. Trélat as insane people who yet reply with exactitude to questions addressed to them, and show no sign of madness to superficial observers, are considered in their family and social relations. A large proportion of his examples are feminine, and touch on so many questions which are practically useful and interesting to the readers of this Journal, that it is amply worth while to draw their attention to the book. M. The great hospital, or, as we should rather call it, the Asylum of la Salpêtrière, is put to a double purpose. Of its enormous population of 5000 women, 3,500 are aged and infirm persons, who here find a resting-place for their last days, and 1,500 are insane. Trélat is one of the medical officials appointed for this latter department. He resides with his family in a suite of fine old rooms (Louis Quinze) attached to the hospital, and has been engaged in attending to the afflicted inmates for twenty-two years: such are his ample credentials for claiming the attention of English readers. The motive of his work is to draw attention to the vast amount of hidden madness existing in the world; madness which breaks forth in violent, cruel, and unreasonable conduct, and perhaps passes away to the grave without ever being characterized by that name, and which, while on the one side it frequently lapses into hopeless and evident mania, shades off, on the other, into the debatable land where vicious propensities or uncontrolled feelings contend for empire in the tottering brain. As might be expected, M. Trélat, from his constant attention to this one subject, and from the scientific character of his intellect, inclines to see madness where the divine and the moralist would testify against wilful indulgence in sin. But this maintenance of a debatable land between the two arenas of judgment is inevitable. In so fine, so subtle an organ as the brain, whose operations during life must ever remain hidden from our sight, and whose condition after death rarely betrays any but the coarser forms of injury, we shall probably never detect the points at which the feeble or the evil will succumbs, and organic mischief commences; and happily, unless the subject, in a comparatively few instances, offends against the law, it is not ours to judge. In this, as in a hundred other questions, there is a limit of common sense, beyond which we need not press the scientific or the religious question; and M. Trélat's object in writing this book is eminently direct and practical; it is to assist magistrates in administering the law, to guide parents in the training of children, and to give some broad warnings and efficient rules to those in danger of allying themselves in marriage or in business with persons whom he considers mad, although they may perchance have method in them; -to quote his own words, he would "diminuer de grandes calamités en mettant à même de les craindre, de les reconnaître et de les éviter.” His book consists of an introduction, descriptive of two classes of insanity that which is easy, and that which is difficult of recognition; followed by fourteen chapters, each devoted to a different form of la Folie Lucide, and headed by a special title, as, Imbeciles, and weak-witted people; and so on; each class being of course specified by examples which have not broken out into what would be ordinarily called madness; or at least in which the madness has supervened after a long course of questionable action, which is just what M. Trélat desires to call attention to. The examples are partly taken from his private practice, partly from cases under his care in the Salpêtrière, and form a curious biographical collection. Some of these we purpose to place before our readers. They point their own moral in almost every instance. But first to the Introduction. After alluding to what he considers the exaggerated signs required by tribunals twenty years. ago, before they would let off a prisoner on the ground of insanity, M. Trélat puts the broad proposition, "that many insane people are living in the midst of us; take part in our actions, our interests, and our affections-which they compromise, trouble, and destroy. Sick minds exercise a profound and prejudicial influence over sound ones; examples of which will be found in the following chapters. We know few greater misfortunes than the entrance of such an insane person into a family. With the best wishes for the true welfare of such, we desire that the kindness shown to them should be suitable to their condition; that they should be the governed and not the governors; above all, we desire that they should be known in order that their alliance should be avoided; for such marriage perpetuates the evil, withers domestic joy, strikes at family life in its right of worthy heritors, and in its hope and its duty of bestowing worthy citizens upon the State." |