bral disease under which he had long laboured, by producing effusion, &c. destroyed his memory, rendered at times ungovernable in his anger, and produced paralysis; but all this was the result of physical disease. It cannot be doubted that his not speaking was not the result of either insanity or imbecility, but arose either from the paralysis of the muscles by which the mechanism of speech is produced, or from loss of memory, such as frequently appears in cerebral disease; for he would often attempt to speak, but could not recollect words to express his meaning, when he would shrug up his shoulders, and sigh heavily. We have also the evidence of one of the few eye-witnesses of the Dean's condition at this period-that he never yet talked nonsense, or said a foolish thing. The disease under which he laboured so long might be termed "epileptic vertigo," such as that described by Esquirol, an affection to which it is well known many men of strong intellect have been subject. For the last few years of his embittered existence-from his 75th to his 78th year-his disease partook so much of the nature of senile decay, or the dementia of old age, that it is difficult to define by any precise medical term his actual state. Mr. Wilde has very carefully examined the question; and although to this day, it is difficult to persuade the great mass of the people in Dublin that the Dean was not one of the first inmates of his own madhouse (although the building was not erected till many years after his death)—yet there is nothing to confirm the assertion, promulgated by Johnson, that Swift's "madness was compounded of rage and fatuity;" or that Swift expired "a driv❜ler and a show."*

To return to M. Delepierre's work. Religious Madmen differ in many essential points from others in their aberrations: their objects are the emotions, the passions, and the instinctive impulses of the soul. A Jesuit named Paoletti, who, in the middle ages, wrote against Thomas Aquinas' doctrine concerning Predestination and Freewill, and who had been in confinement five years when he wrote, composed a treatise in which he "demonstrated that the aborigines of America were the direct descendants of the devil and one of the daughters of Noah; consequently it was absolutely impossible that they should ever obtain salvation or grace."

Simon Morin, who had published an absurd book, was arrested by order of the French Parliament, and was ordered to be sent to a madhouse for the rest of his days. But having abjured his

* It is remarkable that the last sufferings of Sir Walter Scott-one of Swift's biographers, and certainly not the most lenient one-present a striking parallel to the case of Swift in nearly every particular except in point of duration. When Scott was in his 58th year, he first began to feel those premonitory symytoms of incipient disease of the brain under which Swift laboured from the time he was 23. Many of Sir Walter's symptoms in the two closing years of his life, resemble those of Swift; and the post-mortem symptoms are very much alike.—Wilde.

follies he was released, and soon after published another book in which he maintained that he was no other than the Son of Man. He was condemned, in 1662, to be burnt alive with his books, and his ashes to be cast to the wind. So Simon Morin and his heterodoxy were extinguished. On the other hand, St. Francis, the founder of the Franciscans, who saw visions "as of an angel with six burning wings, bearing a figure nailed upon the cross," and who, at any rate, was at one time chained down in a dark room by his parents, and was "deemed to be mad both by the learned and vulgar," he was canonized.

Proceeding to the second division-Literary Madmen, we find that they do not occupy themselves with deep speculations on abstruse subjects: they rarely go below the surface of things, and are concerned rather with the mode of expression of common ideas than with the nature of the ideas themselves. Their intellectual powers being less concentrated than in those who are occupied with philosophy or theology, the exhaustion is much less. Many belonging to this class are persons, who, in madness, are still afflicted with the itching humour of writing. Yet, some there are who, out of decay, emit bright phosporescence of genius, and compose in good style what a professed philosopher may read with advantage: the writings of Nathaniel Lee, born about the end of the seventeenth century, have been praised by Addison. One night, when Lee was composing one of his dreams in his cell in Bedlam, a cloud passed before the moon, by the light of which he was writing, when he suddenly cried out: Jove, snuff the moon. Dryden relates how this same Lee once replied to a bad poet who had made the foolish remark, that it was very easy to write like a madman: "It is very difficult to write like a madman, but it is very easy to write like a fool.”

Alexander Cruden became insane while at college, through his love being rejected by a young lady: he was sent to an asylum, but shortly after recovered; and after he was set at liberty, he wrote his Concordance, a work of surprising research. He was three times placed in confinement; and after his release on the last occasion, despairing of obtaining what he deemed justice for his wrongs, he wrote to his sister, and several of his friends, proposing, with the utmost simplicity, that they should in an easy way afford him a slight compensation-by subjecting themselves to imprisonment for a time in Newgate. Heavenly voices towards the end of his life, informed him that he had a divine mission; and he demanded that he should be recognized of the King in Council, and that he should be created by Act of Parliament, "Corrector of the People."

Living at the same time as Cruden was a certain Christopher Smart, who, after a brilliant career at Cambridge, unhappily became insane. During his confinement he wrote, by means of a

key, on the panels of his chamber, a poem of nearly a hundred stanzas to the "Glory of David, King and Prophet."

Philosophical Madmen are in a somewhat similar position to that of theological madmen: they are mostly vain persons who have lost their way in matters too deep for them; and by reason of their vanity, and of the nature of the subject of their pursuits, are as difficult to deal with as those who speculate on religious mysteries. A deplorable instance of this class is afforded by Thomas Wirgman, who, after making a large fortune as a goldsmith and silversmith, in St. James's-street, London, squandered it all as a regenerating philosopher. He had paper made specially for his books, the same sheet consisting of several different colours; and as he changed the work many times while it was printing, the cost was enormous; one book of 400 pages cost 2,2761. He published a grammar of the five senses, which was a sort of system of metaphysics for the use of children, and maintained that when it was universally adopted in schools, peace and harmony would be restored to the earth, and virtue would everywhere replace crime. He complained much that people would not listen to him, and that, although he had devoted nearly half a century to the propagation of his ideas, he had asked in vain to be appointed Professor in some University or College,-so little does the world appreciate those who labour unto death in its service. Nevertheless, exclaimed Wirgman, after another useless application, "while life remains I will not cease to communicate this blessing to the rising world."

Political Madmen.-Davesney or Davenne, temp. Louis XIV. was of opinion that of right he ought to supplant that monarch, and mount the throne: and he proposed two plans of deciding the question. "Call the Cardinal, the Regent, the Duke of Orleans, the Princes Beaufort, and those who are deemed most holy in the world; have a furnace kindled; let us all be thrown into it, and he who comes out uninjured, like a renovated phoenix from the flames, let him be regarded as the protegé of God, and be ordained prince of the people." Fearing however, naturally enough, that so severe a test might not be acceptable, he proposes another. "Let tle Parliament sentence me to death for having dared to speak the truth to princes. Let them execute me, and if God does not protect me from their hands in a supernatural way, let the memory of me be extinct. If God preserves me not from the hands of the executioners, nothing shall be done to them; but if a supernatural arm tears me from their clutches, let them be sacrificed in my place."*

* Selected and Abridged from an able Paper, by Henry Maudsley, on Delepierre's Histoire Littéraire des Fous, in the Journal of Mental Science, No. 34. With several interpolations.

GENERAL INDEX.