other inclined frames. The owner of the feminine apparel was a girl of twenty-two years, and more than commonly handsome. Her delicate features were as white as marble, contrasting strongly with her hair of jetty black, which fell in deranged but luxuriant masses upon her beautiful shoulders and naked breasts. She had just been taken from the water, and there she lay in such sweet repose, that, but for the associations of the place, one might have imagined her a Nereid in placid slumber. The morning papers gave her name and history. She was not a goddess, but only a poor grisette, who earned a meagre subsistence by daily labour. She was employed in a shop to sell goods, and had lived in pleasant harmony with a young clerk in the same establishment many years. Bnt latterly, it seems, he felt her charms to be less attractive; and, growing tired of her society, he had fomented a dispute on purpose to effect a separation—and so he left her to seek another companion. The poor girl, however, being not gifted with the same selfish facility, or heartless infidelity, found herself unable to support the estrangement, and sought a reconciliation. But in vain. Her false lover had accomplished his object; and, thus abandoned, she felt that the only way

"To bring repentance to her lover,

And wring his heart-strings, was to die."

A leap from the Pont Neuf, where the swift Seine runs most rapidly, and all was over.

The other body was a Spaniard from the West Indies. A long purse in Paris very shortly exhibits to view the terrible epitaph:

"Mene, Tekel, Upharsin."

But when the gambler puts his fingers into it, the catas trophe is too sudden to admit any promonition. Constant losses had nearly exhausted the ample funds of this unhappy youth, when one day, in the private apartment of a café, the report of a pistol was heard, and he was instantly found entirely dead, having his head shockingly mangled by the awful act of self-destruction.

To this building are conveyed the bodies of unknową

persons, who meet with accidental or violent deaths. If not claimed by any friend, they remain three days, and then are interred at the public expense. The number thus annually brought is about three hundred, of which one-sixth only are females.

XLVII.

Royal Lunatic Hospital. Dr. Foville. Price of Board. Treatment. Curious Practice in a part of France. Pyramidal Heads. Flat Heads. Blockheads. Ill Treatment of infants.-New Jersey Hospital for the Insane. Departure from Paris.

YESTERDAY morning I heard a lecture on Insanity at La Salpêtrière, and this morning I went to the great Royal Lunatic Hospital at Charenton, about seven miles from Paris. By means of the omnibuses and early rising, I got there at nine A. M., and attended the visit of the physician, the celebrated Dr. Foville. This institution was founded in 1644 by the minister Sebastian Leblanc; subsequently converted to a boarding house by the Brothers of Charity, for the care of lunacy, and in 1797 changed again to a government establishment. It is most beautifully situated on the summit of an eminence, which commands an excellent prospect of the city, the Seine and the country around, now in the pride of its glory. The bank of the river, and a small island, which is a dependence of the hospital, are covered with trees of various descriptions, of which poplar, maple, and horse chestnut are the most common and conspicuous. The poplar is not here the same miserable ragged runt as in the United States. In its native soil, uninjured by the mild winters, it towers aloft a very handsome ornament to the landscape. It is said, with how much truth I cannot vouch, that those in America are all of the same sex, and reproduced by offsets mostly: and that, even when springing from the seed, like the races of mankind, they have deteriorated from want of "crossing," so essential among animals to the raising of a vigorous and healthy offspring.

The edifice itself, though but partially built, is a patern of the kind. Some years ago a bill passed the Chamber of Deputies appropriating two hundred thousand pounds to its construction. More than one half has been finished at a cost of one hundred and twenty thousand pounds, which completes the accommodations for males; the females are still in the old building, soon destined to give place to one in correspondence with the male department. Doctor Foville, the physician, resides in the city, and makes four visits to the patients every week.There are a resident physician and apothecary beside, who have the charge in the meantime. Few men are better qualified than Doctor Foville, for the care of such an institution. An uncommon union of suitable qualities renders his superiority evident. In person, he is of good size, and endowed with strong athletic powers. His countenance has a peculiar expression of gentleness, decision and reflection. Were we to notice his voice alone, so particularly sweet, soft and winning, we should be disposed to characterize him as a good-natured man, but deficient in firmness; but when one remarks his treatment of the patients, and his general conduct, it is easy to recognize his possession of that resolute determination, so indispensable to his office. In no situation, perhaps, are the scrapes and congés of a Frenchman so productive of real good, as in the management of the insane; the angry passions of the furious are calmed and softened by the deference which such manners habitually display. In going his rounds the doctor had some ten or twelve hundred bows to execute in the space of three hours. Thus polite to the patients, he certainly was not less so to myself and friend-Doctor Selden, of Norfolk, Virginia; and from this visit we bore away with us not only a knowledge of the construction of the building -erected after the plan of the distinguished Esquirolthe method of classification and treatment of the patients; but many hints and ideas of value, which he communicated. As the feelings of patients might be sometimes injured by hearing observations made respecting them, he chiefly spoke in English, which he had at perfect command.

The patients are of two classes, who pay respectively thirteen hundred, nine hundred and seventy-five, and six

hundred and fifty francs a year, including washing.— Fuel, private servants, and incidentals swell that amount of course. The rooms, which those of the highest class occupy, are really very fine. They have a charming aspect, commanding the delightful view before alluded to, and are handsomely supplied with mirrors, clocks and other furniture. During the periods of exacerbation, no distinction is maintained in the classes; they are removed at once from their rooms to another department, where their noise would be heard only by those as furious as themselves. In the treatment of the patients, very little, if any, medicine is given; opiates and sedatives with extreme rarity. The cold douche is not an uncommon means of soothing the excited state into which they frequently relapse. The doctor in speaking of it expressed his opinion, that it was a remedy of great power, but-should be used with extraordinary care, and by no means so indiscriminately, as it is frequently done. Cold baths, and sponging the body with cold water, are often employed. As a means of confinement, the strait jacket is the principal. A treatment of kindness is now generally adopted throughout the world; rarely indeed do we hear at this day of murders or other outrages perpetrated by the insane. Take a sane person, plunge him in a dungeon, enveloped in filth, and exposed to the inclemencies of the weather, load him with irons, throw him his victuals, as you would toss bones to a dog, and it would not be very marvellous if he should revenge his wrongs sometimes by violence as startling as any that have ever been committed by the crazy man. An instance of the powerful operation of kindness, on a disordered intellect is furnished in a young girl, not wanting grace or beauty, who in another institution killed two of her fellow-patients. She is calm and rational here, and needs only kind words and gentle management to render her, what she has become, an agreeable tenant of an apartment adorned in a style of costly luxury.

In this institution there is less apparent confinement, than in any similar one, that I have ever seen. The windows have none of those horrid looking iron bars, which characterize a prison. A grating of wire, nearly the size of a pipe stem, seemed designed more for the

protection of the glass, than the security of a captive prisoner. The doors were open with few exceptions, and their clothes were in their rooms, so that they could take them, when they wished to promenade in the court below. Though one hundred and eighty persons were attached to the establishment having the care of the patients solely, without including the private servants, there was no symptom of surveillance. As a peculiarity in the practice of Doctor Foville; I noticed that he made no concealment of their malady, but conversed with them on the subject, as he would have done of any bodily disease. This I think much better, than the subterfuge and evasion so commonly resorted to for the concealment of the patient's complaint, which is sure, sooner or later to be discovered by him; and information, thus obtained, is likely to be productive of much detriment to the patient.

As we went round the long galleries, Dr. Foville pointed out to us several persons whose heads were of a very peculiar form, more or less perfectly approaching the pyramidal; the face might represent the base, and the occiput the apex. Their foreheads were particularly flat and narrow. In reference to them he remarked, that this species of head was peculiar to a particular department of France, in the same manner as the flat-heads of the Indians are peculiar to one tribe. In this district more children die at an early age than in any other; the diseases being principally convulsions and other maladies, which depend on the health of the brain. More insane come from this, than from any other quarter of the kingdom, in proportion to the population; and finally, more cases of idiocy, epilepsy, and the like, than elsewhere. What is the cause? Evidently the peculiar shape of the head, which pervades the people of that whole region, who all participate in this deformity, in a greater or less degree, without a single exception. So universal is it indeed, that some painters and sculptors, regarding it as the natural head of man, have drawn from this source their beau-ideal of beauty; and fixed upon the sloping shoulders of their Venuses and Apollos, heads gracefully rising in tapering pyramids.

An investigation of this extraordinary phenomenon has been made, and the cause discovered. The Flat-Head