effects of opium, the communication with the outer world is sealed up, and the imagination is left, like an unfed stomach, to work upon itself. It is haply a merciful provision that the morbid continuity and sameness of the mind's operation which denotes the commencement of insanity, overstrains and snaps itself, and leaves nothing but disjointed fragments of the tyrannic idea, as we sometimes see a huge black thundercloud shivered into a myriad flaky portions, all impregnated and reddened with the electric fire, yet each assuming some fantastic shape of its own. The intense heat collected in the focus cracks the burning glass and allows the fragments to cool. Sad as this advanced state of madness, when the intellect exists only in monads and atoms, may be to look upon, I doubt not that it is a happy state compared to the misery of the mind. whose body, mind, and soul are possessed in the unity of one dark memory or hideous image-one hell-burning passion. Sometimes, when madness has done its work, a change, a blessed change, comes over the spirit of the dream; the presentations are no longer frightful, but gay and smiling. The ruins of the mind are overgrown with herbage, wild indeed, and useless, but not without beauty or fragrance. Often the whole unhappy life seems to be obliterated, and the poor lunatic awakes a perfect, gamesome, laughing, tearful, prattling, flower-loving child. Insanity subsides into premature dotage. And it may be, when guilt was not the cause of distraction, when the sufferer has been more sinned

against than sinning, his soul, though it cannot have an intelligible communion with earth, is cheered and refreshed with no delusive glimpses of a better world. At all events, it must be some benefit to the insane to lose the consciousness of insanity; for what has madness so horrible as the knowledge of itself? Better no reason at all than the reason which discerns and condemns the tumult which it cannot stay.

The passage from partial to total lunacy is probably much more rapid in some cases than in others, according to the strength of body and of intellect, the age and strength of the patient, and the protraction or suddenness of the proximate causes. Unforeseen calamity, terror without warning, strike like the thunderbolt; while slow, wasting sorrow, disappointed affection, a "too keen sense of constant infelicity," undermine the intellect by unforeseen degrees, and seldom unsettle the pure reason, however they loosen the sinews of the understanding. A strong masculine imagination judiciously exercised, is so far from a symptom of derangement, that it is highly conservative of sanity. Industrious habits, cheerful temperance, an energetic will, a single corner of the heart for love and hope to hide in, will save the brain from turning, long, very long, perhaps till death bring deliverance. A sure and loving faith in God, founded on a right idea of the Divine nature and attributes, and nourished with prayer and good works, will prevent insanity from ever obtaining mastery over the reason, though it may

not always prevent its existing in the feelings and in the imagination. Not that I believe that worldly misfortune would ever impair even the intellectual faculties of a sincere and enlightened Christian, born with mens sana in corpore sano, living among his fellow-men, and performing all his duties in the world. The partial derangement of Cowper was a bodily disease that displayed itself before he became emphatically a religious man. In the later part of his life it rarely affected his reason, though it sorely afflicted his heart.

THE BOOKS OF MY CHILDHOOD.

11

I AM a man of small reading and small experience, yet much of my little has lain in bye-paths, where few, perhaps, have strayed at all; still fewer wandered with observant eyes. I have been a loiterer out of the daily ways of men so long, that I scarcely know whether I be in or out of the beaten track. It is easy for the ignorant to find curiosities—for to ignorance, just awakened by the desire of knowledge, everything is new and strange. Often, in the course of my devious peregrinations, have I cried cupŋka, when stumbling on some theory old as Pythagoras; often should have blushed to find my brightest discoveries, either copy-head common-places, or paradoxes of puzzle-books. I have hailed, as new-found lands, the fog-banks that have misled bewildered barques in centuries past; and brought home, as special rarities, wares with which the market has long been glutted.

'He that taught himself had a fool for his master." True-if he neglected the instructions of his elders, or voluntarily chose himself, when he might have had a better master. As I am not about to write confessions of a desultory reader, I have no occasion to acknowledge myself that fool; but I believe I should

have learned more with fewer teachers—and certainly have read more with fewer books. From infancy to manhood, I was surrounded with books-good old books-which I despair of seeing again. I lived much with great men, and should have lived more with some that have departed.

A well-filled library, though a precious, is yet a melancholy sight. How few of those folios shall I ever read! How few can any one man read aright! How many are little likely, in this generation at least, to be read aright at all; and yet how much might be derived from their pages, had we a just value for the salvages of time!

It is matter mortifying to a person, who would fain be thought on good terms with good company, to read in a division, names of peers which he is ashamed to read aloud for fear of mispronouncing. I have a somewhat similar feeling, when I discover how very slight and imperfect is my acquaintance with the heroes of classic lore. Casting my eye over a brief notice of Silius Italicus, extracted from the “Bibliotheca Latina" of John Alfred Fabricius, enlarged by John Augustus Ernestus, I find in a single page the formidable designations of Jac. Duport, Modius in Novantiquis Lectionibus, Glandorpius in Onomastico, Nic. Antonius Bibliothec. His. Vet., Christophorus Cellarius, Arnold. Drakenborchius, Nic. Hiero. Glundlingius in Gundlingianis-parte 12. Claudius Dausqueius, Thomas de Pinedo, and Joh. Anto. Vulpius, not one of whom I ever, to my recollection, heard of before, could I comfort myself with the reflection