Of 79 patients it appears that '12 went mad from disappointed affections. 49 from constitutional causes. 8 from failure in business. 4 from hereditary disposition to madness. 1 from mercury. 1 from parturition.' The following case is extremely curious; and we wish it had been authenticated by name, place, and signature. 'A young woman, who was employed as a domestic servant by the father of the relater, when he was a boy, became insane, and at length sunk into a state of perfect idiocy. In this condition she remained for many years, when she was attacked by a typhus fever; and my friend, having then practised some time, attended her. He was surprised to observe, as the fever advanced, a development of the mental powers. During that period of the fever, when others were delirious, this patient was entirely rational. She recognized in the face of her medical attendant the son of her old master, whom she had known so many years before; and she related many circumstances respecting his family, and others which had happened to herself in her earlier days. But, alas! it was only the gleam of reason. As the fever abated, clouds again enveloped the mind: she sunk into her former deplorable state, and remained in it until her death, which happened a few years afterwards. I leave to the metaphysical reader further speculation on this, certainly, very curious case.'-(p. 137.) men. Upon the whole, we have little doubt that this is the best managed asylum for the insane that has ever yet been estab lished; and a part of the explanation no doubt is, that the Quakers take more pains than other people with their madA mad Quaker belongs to a small and rich sect; and is, therefore, of greater importance than any other mad person of the same degree in life. After every allowance, however, which can be made for the feelings of sectaries, exercised towards their own disciples, the Quakers, it must be allowed, are a very charitable and humane people. They are always ready with their money, and, what is of far more importance, with their time and attention, for every variety of human misfortune. They seem to set themselves down systematically before the difficulty, with the wise conviction that it is to be lessened or subdued only by great labour and thought; and that it is always increased by indolence and neglect. In this instance, they have set an example of courage, patience, and kindness, which cannot be too highly commended, or too widely dif fused; and which, we are convinced, will gradually bring into repute a milder and better method of treating the insane. For the aversion to inspect places of this sort is so great, and the temptation to neglect and oppress the insane so strong, both from the love of power, and the improbability of detection, that we have no doubt of the existence of great abuses in the interior of many madhouses. A great deal has been done for prisons; but the order of benevolence has been broken through by this preference; for the voice of misery may sooner come up from a dungeon, than the oppression of a madman be healed by the hand of justice.* The Society of Friends have been extremely fortunate in the choice of their male and female superintendents at the asylum, Mr. and Mrs. Jephson. It is not easy to find a greater combination of good sense and good feeling than these two persons possess:-but then the merit of selecting them rests with their employers. AMERICA. (EDINBURGH REVIEW, 1818.) 1. Travels in Canada and the United States, in 1816 and 1817. By Lieutenant Francis Hall, 14th Light Dragoons, H. P. London. Longman & Co. 1818. 2. Journal of Travels in the United States of North America, and in Lower Canada, performed in the year 1817, &c. &c. By John Palmer. London. Sherwood, Neely & Jones. 1818. 3. A Narrative of a Journey of Five Thousand Miles through the Eastern and Western States of America; contained in Eight Reports, addressed to the Thirty-nine English Families by whom the Author was deputed, in June, 1817, to ascertain whether any and what Part of the United States would be suitable for their Residence. With Remarks on Mr. Birkbeck's 'Notes' and 'Letters.' By Henry Bradshaw Fearon. London. Longman & Co. 1818. 4. Travels in the Interior of America, in the Years 1809, 1810, and 1811, &c. By John Bradbury, F.L.S. Lond. 8vo. London. Sherwood, Neely & Jones. 1817. THESE four books are all very well worth reading, to any per son who feels, as we do, the importance and interest of the subject of which they treat. They contain a great deal of information and amusement; and will probably decide the fate, and direct the footsteps, of many human beings, seeking a better lot than the Old World can afford them. Mr. Hall is a clever, lively man, very much above the common race of writers; with very liberal and reasonable opinions, which he expresses with great boldness,--and an inexhaustible fund of good humour. He has the elements of wit in him; but sometimes is trite and flat when he means to be amusing. He writes verses, too, and is occasionally long and metaphysical: but, upon the whole, we think highly of Mr. Hall; and deem him, if he is not more than twenty-five years of age, an extraordinary young man. He is not the less extraordinary for being a lieutenant of Light Dragoons-as it is certainly some what rare to meet with an original thinker, an indulgent judge of manners, and a man tolerant of neglect and familiarity, in a youth covered with tags, feathers, and martial foolery. Mr. Palmer is a plain man, of good sense and slow judgment. Mr. Bradbury is a botanist, who lived a good deal among the savages, but worth attending to. Mr. Fearon is a much abler writer than either of the two last, but no lover of America, and a little given to exaggeration in his views of vices and prejudices. Among other faults with which our government is chargeable, the vice of impertinence has lately crept into our cabinet; and the Americans have been treated with ridicule and contempt. But they are becoming a little too powerful, we take it, for this cavalier sort of management; and are increasing with a rapidity which is really no matter of jocularity to us, or the other powers of the Old World. In 1791, Baltimore contained 13,000 inhabitants; in 1810, 46,000; in 1817, 60,000. In 1790, it possessed 13,000 tons of shipping; in 1798, 59,000; in 1805, 72,000; in 1810, 103,444. The progress of Philadelphia is as follows:- 'Now it is computed there are at least 120,000 inhabitants in the city and suburbs, of which 10,000 are free coloured people."-Palmer, p. 254, 255. The population of New York (the city), in 1805, was 60,000; it is now 120,000. Their shipping, at present, amounts to 300,000 tons. The population of the state of New York was, at the accession of his present majesty, 97,000, and is now nearly 1,000,000. Kentucky, first settled in 1773, had, in 1792, a population of 100,000; and in 1810, 406,000. Morse reckons the whole population of the western territory, in 1790, at 6,000; in 1810 it was near half a million; and will probably exceed a million in 1820. These, and a thousand other equally strong proofs of their increasing strength, tend to extinguish pleasantry, and provoke thought. We were surprised and pleased to find from these accounts that the Americans on the Red River and the Arkansas River have begun to make sugar and wine. Their importation of wool into this country is becoming also an object of some consequence; and they have inexhaustible supplies of salt and coal. But one of the great sources of wealth in America is and will be an astonishing command of inland navigation. The Mississippi, flowing from the north to the Gulf of Mexico, through seventeen degrees of latitude; the Ohio and the Alleghany almost connecting it with the Northern Lakes; the Wabash, the Illinois, the Missouri, the Arkansas, the Red River, flowing from the confines of New Mexico;-these rivers, all navigable, and most of them already frequented by steamboats, constitute a facility of internal communication not, we believe, to be paralleled in the whole world. One of the great advantages of the American government is its cheapness. The American king has about 50007. per annum, the vice-king 1000l. They hire their Lord Liverpool at about a thousand per annum, and their Lord Sidmouth (a good bargain) at the same sum. Their Mr. Crokers are inexpressibly reasonable,--somewhere about the price of an English doorkeeper, or bearer of a mace. Life, however, seems to go on very well, in spite of these low salaries; and the purposes of government to be very fairly answered. Whatever may be the evils of universal suffrage in other countries, they have not yet been felt in America; and one thing at least is established by her experience, that this insti tution is not necessarily followed by those tumults, the dread of which excites so much apprehension in this country. In the most democratic states, where the payment of direct taxes is the only qualification of a voter, the elections are carried on with the utmost tranquillity; and the whole business, by taking votes in each parish or section, concluded all over the state in a single day. A great deal is said by Fearon about Caucus, the cant word of the Americans for the committees and party meetings in which the business of the elections is prepared-the influence of which he seems to consider as prejudicial. To us, however, it appears to be nothing more than the natural, fair and unavoidable influence which talent, popularity and activity always must have upon such occasions. |