duced to doubt the justness of his perceptions, until at last he regains his powers.

These outlines cannot be too highly commended for their simplicity and clearness. Relieved from the dogmas that usually strew such inquiries with perpetual doubts, and from that affected nomenclature which has no other effect than that of increasing the obscurity, Dr. Mayo's descriptions are as intelligible to the non-professional reader, as they are valuable to the scientific student.

The relation of suicide to insanity, and of phrenology to the science of mind, to which separate chapters are devoted, well worthy of attentive perusal, we are compelled to pass over, in the desire to complete, within a reasonable compass, the review of the elements of the subject to which these chapters contribute valuable illustrations rather than necessary features. We must also, with reluctance, omit an analysis of the chapters dedicated to the mental and medical treatment of insanity, in which the disease is practically considered in both points of view, the moral and intellectual preventives pointed out, and the remedies exhibited throughout all the stages of the disease. These chapters are full of important matter, the result of careful observation, and evidently of extensive experience, wanting which, such suggestions would be deficient in comprehensiveness and authority.

The next division of the general subject is that which comes under the head of Deficiency of a mental property, as Insanity comes under the head of Perversion. This division, as we have already indicated, is again divided into Brutality and Idiocy. We will follow these in the order in which we find them.

Brutality a designation adopted from Aristotle, but not the more characteristic or commendable on that account is that form of disease which deviates farther from the normal state than insanity, and amounts to the original deficiency or abolition of the moral sense. What Swift says of Lord Wharton seems to describe the characteristics of this revolting malady with sufficient accuracy: "He is without the sense of shame or glory, as some men are without the sense of smelling; and therefore a good name to him is no more than a precious ointment would be to these." Men of this description who betray an incapacity for moral distinctions, who violate moral obligations, and who yet do not exhibit any of those false perceptions or intellectual incoherencies which belong to insanity, form a class amongst themselves: persons, to use the words of Dr. Mayo, destitute of the moral faculty, and also vicious in their propensities. How is this class of individuals to be treated? The question is full of embarrassments and perplexities.

"In regard to the principles," says Dr. Mayo, " on which this morbid condition may be treated, the law, it may be observed, greedily takes advantage of its co-existence with insanity, whenever this occurs, and it readily does occur, to control the unsound habit of mind, but has not hitherto been able to grasp it in its own form. Although, in truth, the state which we term brutality spreads as wide devastation as insanity would, if insanity were left uncontrolled, and is, according to the above view, equally a disease of the mind."

In the former essay, already alluded to, which Dr. Mayo published on this subject, he brought forward the state of brutality as a form of insanity; but subsequent consideration has induced him to abandon that classification as loose and unphilosophical. We are not quite satisfied that his former view was incorrect. Our definitions and legal expositions of insanity are not so conclusive of the question as to preclude us from requiring legal safeguards against new shapes of misery and evil. That brutality is a disease of the moral faculty, Dr. Mayo has succeeded in establishing; and

it remains yet to be considered, whether this disease does not, of necessity, involve a disability of the intellectual powers? Can that man be said to be capable of reasoning justly, who is destitute of the moral sense? There may be no flaw in the process and chain of argumentation – the form may be correct but if this great defect prevail over his thoughts, as it must, will it not always conduct him with certainty to results as injurious to himself and to society, as those which the insane arrive at only upon impulse and incidentally? The subject at all events demands a larger measure of consideration than we can now bestow upon it; and in the meanwhile the case of Lord Ferrers, referred to by Dr. Mayo, will serve as a hinge for the debate. After alluding to the disgraceful scenes which take place at our public offices, where a father is sometimes heard soliciting the infliction of an ignominious punishment for his son, having no other mode of obviating the deficiency of principle than the penal inflictions of the law, our author proceeds,

"But it is yet more painful, that the offender should be allowed to wander on through crimes and inflicted misery, until he reach this goal. An instance of such a termination to the course of the brutal person is afforded by the unhappy Lord Ferrers. That nobleman was not insane in any customary use of the word; his intellectual faculties were good; and they were directed by a powerful will towards definite objects; neither did he exhibit that moral incoherency, which we have described amongst the earliest phenomena of the insane state. The business-like talents, indeed, which he displayed in his own defence, indisposed his judges to allow him the advantage of that plea. But his brutality made him unfit for social existence the laws of this country did not reach him as a subject for confinement. Therefore he was hanged. This procedure was unavoidable under the circumstances of the case, and in the present state of our laws; but it constitutes a painful fact, considering that education at present affords no prevention to such criminality."

In this case, at least, we have an instance of an indomitable will acting upon the intellectual powers with surprising effect for the worst of pur poses purposes as averse to the reasoning of a sound judgment, as they were repugnant to the moral sense.

The last form of malady that comes under this head, may be briefly disposed of in the language of the author: Idiocy, or imbecility, is analogous to brutality, as it implies a deficiency or abolition of natural properties. In this respect it bears the same relation to the understanding which brutality bears to the heart. This familiar form of calamity requires no further elucidation.

We have exhibited the prominent features of this able work in mere outlines. The author has condensed his views with so much skill, that it would be impossible to convey the substantial arguments and illustrations he employs by any mode of abbreviation or analysis in a much shorter compass than the book itself occupies. If, however, we have succeeded in extracting the essence, we shall have accomplished as much as we proposed. But to those who are interested in such investigations- and who is not?-we recommend a careful perusal of the thoughtful volume itself. No review, however carefully executed, can render that advice superfluous.

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ON a certain day in the year 1815, a young foreigner of timid bearing and bashful mien presented himself at the London residence of Mrs. Jerningham, the sister-in-law of Lord Stafford. He came, recommended by some one, to solicit the modest place of preceptor. This step was dictated by pressing necessity; his dress bespoke extreme poverty. With out even asking him to be seated, the lady addressed him a few brief inquiries, and then dismissed him on the ground, qu'elle lui trouvait l'air trop bête. This was M. Lamennais.

Nine years afterwards, in June 1824, a priest famous for works, of which 40,000 copies had been rapidly disposed of- famous for an uncompromising war against the spirit of revolution, and in favour of authority spiritual and temporal, sustained with an eloquence equal, and with a profoundness of logic and erudition far superior to that of Bossuet- his lofty brow, beaming with faith and hope-travelled from France to Rome to hold a personal conference with Leo XII. He found in the chamber of the pontiff (its only decorations) a picture of the Virgin and a portrait of himself. Leo XII. welcomed him with admiration and confidence. The Cardinal Lambruschini, now secretary of state, was, at his instigation, appointed apostolic nuncio to France. On all sides there was a chorus of praises and gratitude that troubled not the head of the priest, but that made his heart beat joyously in the thought that good times for the church in danger were again coming on, and that Rome perchance, moved by his glowing words, was about to rise at a single bound to the loftiness of a grand social mission, such as his soul had conceived, such as the epoch, exhausted and purposeless, was demanding. This priest was M. Lamennais.

Eight years had rolled on, and the same priest was journeying to Rome a second time, but sad and pensive, with two companions who were soon to abandon him, but who then shared his faith, his labours, and the accusations which had suddenly sprung up against him, and which were past his understanding. In explanation of his intentions, he went to present a justification of his works to that power whose past he venerated, that had blessed his cradle, and for which he had combated during twenty years of his life. In the pureness of his conscience, and under the influence of one of those noble illusions that evidence alone can destroy-often destroying at the same time one-half of the soul he went to essay a last effort for the relief of this fallen power, and to infuse into its withered veins a drop of the life-blood of humanity. Notes from Austria, Prussia, and Russia preceded him; they demanded of the pope a formal condemnation of the doctrine of this audacious commentator on St. Paul, who maintained, that where the spirit of God is, there should liberty reign also. The Jesuits backed these notes by their unseen machinations. The Cardinal Lambruschini, the same to whom he had opened the path to the hierarchy, intrigued against him. Gregory XVI. received him coldly, and then only on condition that he offered not a single word on the subject that had brought him to Rome. A long memorial which he presented obtained no answer, perhaps was not even read. Saturated with the bitterness of grief, having sounded the ancient edifice stone by stone, and every where found the dust and frailty of ruin, this priest departed. He cast a long and regretful look on

that cupola of St. Peter's, that was no longer the sanctuary of God's word. With a heart afflicted, as though he had been assisting at the funeral ceremonies of a being whom he had loved with all his might, he traversed that vast and desert Campagna which may be called a striking image of the solitude that day by day increases around the papal chair. But he carried his faith with him across the desert, and his faith saved him. He knew that the purpose of God is eternal, and that the apostolic mission may change its organs and their paths, but that it is to continue in the world until the last day of that world. He knew that a power passing away is a power in transmission, and that a creed decayed is a creed which undergoes transformation. In place of despairing, he set himself to consider what new life was about to spring out from the old body. He turned his eagle glance from the eminences of the world to its base, looking every where for the signs that should herald this other power, whose revelation could not be tardy. He awaited in meditation and prayer, till some sudden inspiration should make manifest to him where the spirit of God had chosen its temple. On a certain day, whilst Rome and absolute royalty believed this man conquered, he arose as one constrained; his voice, already so powerful, had gained an indefinable elevation, as of the olden prophets a certain religious solemnity, that bore the impress of a truth long and painfully sought, and at length discovered. He discoursed not; he prophesied. He preached God, the people, liberty, and love. He declared the powers of the day fallen, and called on the nations to tear from their hands the insignia of a mission which they had failed to comprehend. He denounced all that he had hitherto defended; he advocated all that he had so lately inveighed against. Since then he has not changed, and he will change no more.

There was in this a great lesson to learn. In this struggle, in a holy and devoted spirit, between the recollection of the past and the presentiment of the future in this unequal, tempestuous, and often wavering, but in the end, progressive and ascendant march in the search of truth, of a powerful and conscientious intelligence in this unexpected conclusion, contrary in appearance to twenty years of past exertion, and going suddenly to set a religious sanction on all that the purblind instinct of inferior spirits had been pursuing for half a century- there was, we say, on the one hand, a rare psychological phenomenon to study, and on the other, a bright augury to draw, a confirmation of the lately installed dogma of the people, or, if it be preferred, of the sovereignty of nations. With a few exceptions, the lesson was unheeded. When they saw this mighty individuality, whose energies might be supposed to have been exhausted in a long career brilliantly carried out to the end, thus lift himself like a giant between a world in decay and a world in infancy-when they saw him casting away from him his whole past existence at one spring, bounding over the abyss that separates the tomb from the cradle, throwing himself with renovated youth into the territory of the future — friends and enemies recoiled for a moment aghast, and he created around him, as it were, a vast circumference of silence and solitude. The former abandoned him in their hearts, perhaps making it his crime that his was more penetratingly bold than them all; the latter continued to regard him with a sort of distrust, in hatred of his past existence. The partisans of papal Catholicism, as soon as they had recovered from their stupor, hurled upon him every species of insult and calumny. They forgot the immense distance dividing the changes effected by the march of thought, and those resulting from mere lust of power, and judged M. Lamennais as they might judge M. Thiers or M. Lerminier. They explained this sudden illumination of a fervent and

active spirit as the mere irritation of self-conceit, just as the labours of Luther were explained to be a venal and selfish jealousy of a monk; they asserted, as it was asserted of Luther, that a cardinal's hat would have prevented the revolt. These men would not have comprehended St. Paul in the journey to Damascus: even in this country, M. Lamennais has not been properly appreciated. Prejudice has travestied his political convictions; and but a little while since we saw this man, all mildness and charity, who cries like a child at the symphonies of Beethoven, who gives to the poor his last franc,-who tends the smallest little flower, protects the insect, and turns from his path for the ant-saying, "Should not all enjoy the light, that has been created for all" we have seen this man transformed, by one of our reviews, into a creature of blood, into a preacher of anarchy. Moreover, each of his publications has been judged separately as a work of art or of politics; never, that we are aware of, has this vast and fertile intelligence been estimated as a whole.

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It is time that this should be done. M. Lamennais occupies a rank so elevated as a philosopher, as a writer, and in France, as a political power, his progress is so intimately allied to that of the age, that for those even who conceive nothing of the good there is in studying the spectacle of virtuous genius, it must be of considerable importance to know the proper estimate of a man who has such great, and who, one day or other, will have still greater, influence on France and the rising generation of Europe.

We pretend not to do this here: if we had the courage to undertake it, we should have to follow step by step throughout his different works, the progress of the great principle of M. Lamennais, the thread that, in some sort, knits together aspirations apparently the most divergent. Above all, we should have to show that his theory of the philosophy of common sense, or of tradition considered as a principle of certitude, must by logical necessity inevitably lead him, sooner or later, to the social principle of the people, the sole depositary and continuator of tradition. We hold, that under all the circumstances of detail — looking also in great part to the influence of events ever most potent on minds of poetical excitability, as was that of the Abbé — there appears a wonderful unity that will render his change the less unexpected. But this task cannot be confined to the limits of some half dozen fugitive pages. We do but trace here a sketch hardly sufficient to provoke a deeper attention to our subject, and to indicate the point of view that alone can lead, in our opinion, to a just and useful estimate. A detailed examination of the political creed and the religious tendency of M. Lamennais would carry us too far.

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Felicité Lamennais, as he himself signs his name, was born in 1782 at Saint Malo, in that Brittany that has given to France Pelagius, Abelard, and Descartes: some years before, the same city witnessed the birth of Chateaubriand. He lost his mother whilst still a child. The Revolution destroyed a large fortune amassed by his father in commercial pursuits, depriving the son at the same time of the means of a regular education. The boy having thus escaped the routine of college grew up, under the eye of God, free and without a master, passing his days between the library-where an old uncle often shut him up, putting in his hands Horace and Tacitus, the first Latin books that he read-and the measureless ocean that beat against the dark and naked rocks of Brittany, a wave of eternal poetry. His intellect developed itself lofty and independent in loneliness, and in the absence of all

These words are preserved in the "Etudes sur l'Abbé J. De Lamennais," by M. Edmond Robinet (1835), the friend and conscientious admirer of the Abbé. We have made use of this interesting little book for the facts that were not furnished us by our own personal knowledge.