never went out but to church. Yet she often appeared to me to enjoy a sort of unworldly happiness in the practice of religion, to which Che devoted herself with a constancy and fervor that I often thought interfered with her fondness of me. I know she never so poured out all her heart on me in tenderness, or felt the same delight or consolation in me, as I did in my child, when I, too, was left by him I loved."

There was here an interruption in her narrative.

"When I got to be a year or two old, my father became dotingly fond of me-nothing could keep him from me. He would brave my mother's displeasure, her avoidance, even the bitter pain he saw his visits occasioned her, to have the delight of fondling his little daughter-for I was his only child. The most costly jewelled ornaments he used to bring me-of which I had a great treasure, though you never knew of it-and would submit to every hardship, to every loss from neglect of business, in travelling from England, but to see that I was well.

"When I grew up to be a girl and have a little discretion, he himself told me the whole tale (for I did not learn it from my mother's lips ;) and with contrition, even with tears, would express to me his deep remorse and self-condemnation, i.is still-enduring admiration and love for my mother, and the misery he had entailed upon himself by his ambition for wealth and commercial distinction. He did every thing for me that money could effect, procured me the most expensive teachers in various accomplishments, gave me all things in the way of dress or ornament that I desired, made me completely, and I believe solely, his confidant, and to my ear alone made known the place of torment which he had made his home. He might have seemed to others haughty and contemptuous, even oppressive-a public sinner, and appearing to glory in sin; but to me he was always indulgent, affectionate, devoted, earnestly anxious for my welfare, strictly moral in every thought and expression-everything a father should be.

"I could not help loving him and pitying him-oh, how much!-for he had been all that was kind and loving to me from my earliest recollection. Yet my mother never stinted her disdain, her animosity towards him ; and our interviews in her presence were so unpleasant, that he could only open his heart to me out of the house, and thus I was led to walk out with him frequently about the streets and the park.

It was he who encouraged my connexion with you, Basil, approved of and urged me to our marriage, and expressed his design of bestowing upon me and my offspring the vast wealth he had accumulated, as an attempt at atonement for the evil he had done my mother and myself. But when he saw the unhappy issue of the step, it preyed upon him more than tongue can tell. His health showed it, and still that demon of a wife, as he styled her, kept a tenacious hold of life, to make every hour of his existence wretched.

"I lived with my mother till her death, which took place about two years after you left me. He then removed me from Scotland to this place. Some time afterwards his wife died, leaving all the property she had possessed to her own relations; but the amount was not a fourth of what he had himself amassed in trade; retiring with which he came here to me, and

gradually declining, died, as if from old age, though under forty years. His whole property he has bequeathed to me and your son.

"While he lived here he became a changed man, and, thoroughly repentant, sought, by the devoted belief and practice of religion, to establish a hope for that happiness in another state of existence of which had so miserably deprived himself in this."

"Why did you not tell me of all this, Marianne? You should have had no secrets from your husband."

"Alas! Basil, I could not betray my father's secret: I knew not how you might receive it. Had it become known, he might have been publicly tried for his crime: how could I betray my father? Besides, I knew your feelings of honor, and feared to tell you of the stain on the legitimacy of your wife; it might at the least have made you love me less. My father, moreover, had bound me by the strongest injunctions never to disclose it during his life. I did, indeed, resolve once to tell you so much at least as would have set at rest your jealousy, but I knew not how to break it."

"Oh, Marianne! you must have had but a meagre idea of my character to dread that any fault of your parents, any conventional disgrace of birth, could ever have lowered my opinion, or lessened my love of you, so long as your own virtue was stainless."

Here they were interrupted-a knock was heard at the door. "Come in, Gerald," said she.

"Gerald," said his father, "when did you change your name? how came you to spell it with an 'e' additional?

"I don't spell it with an 'e'

"Then what is this?" said Basil, drawing his letter from his porket, and showing him the signature.

66

Oh, that--that's only a flourish after the final '

'y.'

"Marianne, what has become of our cottage in the North ?"

"I believe it is as we left it, with all your books and furniture. My father paid the rent, and had it kept in order.”

"Then we shall go down there again, love-we shall break up this establishment, and hire other servants, who shall not know aught of our previous fortunes. Gerald shall not leave us till he is a man. We shall

all be happy again. We have had our share of misery-may we hope that our trials are over! At all events jealousy shall never cause vs more disquietude."

Varyanski, the Student.

Of all the strange situatious in which it has been the lot of my eventful youth to be placed, the most remarkable was the temporary care of a private asylum for the insane. In the course of my medical studies I had frequently been thrown into society with a young gentleman, nephew to the proprietor of an establishment of the kind in question, in which he acted as assistant or clerk. We soon formed an intimacy, and at length, when a necessity arose that he should visit some near relations in the north of Ireland, he requested me to favor him by performing his duty in the house for a week or two during his absence.

As it was not inconvenient to me at the time, and I was very desirous to see the mode of treatment practised by the proprietor, who though not by profession a medical man, had no indifferent reputation in his peculiar line, I was very glad to take advantage of the offer, and soon found myself at the establishment.

I was particular to make inquiry of my friend with regard to the nature of the cases to be under my care, and was informed that the house was unusually empty at the time, there not being more than fifteen patients in it, and that few of the cases were possessed of much interest, with the exception of one, whose peculiarities he forthwith proceeded to explain

to me.

"The individual," said he, "is a young Pole, by name Loretan Maryanski, a person of very high talent; and his hallucination is, that, on the Pathogorean principle, his body is animated by no less a soul than that of the celebrated hero Kosciusko. So long as you avoid interference with this idea, you will find him a most intelligent and accomplished young fellow-a gentleman in every respect. He was a student of medicine in London for some years-in fact, he has not been many months with us--and, strange enough, he devoted, all along, very much attention to the study of mental disorders, upon which subject you will find his information nearly unimpeachable. He believes that he is at present, as a pupil, prosecuting his studies of that class of disease in our asylum, and devotes much attention to all the cases, whilst his care and humanity to the sufferers are unremitting.

"His father was a nobleman of one of the lesser grades in Lithuania, I believe, who, having taken an energetic part in the last insurrection, found it necessary to flee to England, and, along with others in similar circumstances, to become a pensioner on the bounty of our countrymen. By this means, and also from a tolerable income he could make by acting as foreign clerk to an extensive mercantile house, and by employing his spare hours in teaching German, and French, he has been enabled to rear a family in comfort, and also to educate his eldest son for the medical profession.

"Loretan was a good classical scholar before he was brought to Eng land, and was also well acquainted with German, French, and English. the last he speaks with very little foreign accent, and is moreover familiar with almost all its idioms, a facility in acquiring which, as well as the accent, is, I am informed, a peculiar property of his countrymen, beyond the people of any other continental nation. As a student he was most devoted, giving his great talents completely to his tasks, nor ever allowing the usual temptations of youth to draw him for a moment from them. I have often thought that, when a man of active and original intellect has never been allowed-by constraint, whether of others, or self-imposed-to mingle with society, but has, from his earliest experience, associated with books, and not with men (if you will allow me the expression,)—when in addition he has the strong motives of emulation and knowledge of his own powers, or the stronger still of necessity, to force him to solitary studies-he creates around him a strange world-book-derived-which is quite different from that of ordinary life, and really constitutes a kind of insanity. The idea of madness from much learning would appear to have been a prevalent one from the days of the apostle Paul to our own; and when you reflect how many of the most noble minds of this age have sunk and extinguished in imbecility and mania, you will probably have a clearer view than otherwise, as well of my precise drift in the argument, as of the case of my poor friend Maryanski.

"His disorder had long been suspected of overstepping the bounds of eccentricity. He began to talk mysteriously of the possibility of holding intercourse with superior beings, to mention the old doctrine of Rosicrucianism with approbation, and seriously express his belief in the theory of the transmigration of souls. At length his hallucination took form, and he coolly and frequently enough announced himself to be the dead hero revived. These ideas his fellow students received at first with ridicule, till at length it proved somewhat more than a joke to one. Several of them were together in a bookseller's shop, which they were in the habit of frequenting. He was among them, and found means in the course of conversation on a German physiological work, to introduce his favorite notion, narrating several interesting anecdotes of himself when Kosciusko, which I am afraid are not to be found recorded in any life of that personage. But one of the students, more waggish than wise, ventured to tell him that he too had recollections of a similar kind, having in a former state of existence actually been the celebrated Marshall Suwarrow. The word had hardly left his lips, when the Pole, in a burst of frenzy that was plainly maniacal, seized a ponderous beam of iron, the bar used to fix the window-shutters at night, and, heaving it aloft, brought it down with his whole strength in the direction of the unlucky jester's crown, accompanying the act with a wild shriek that speedily collected a crowd round the door. Had the blow reached its aim it would undoubtedly have sent the spirit of the Russian in quest of a less jocular tabernacle. As it was, the poor fellow had just time to start to one side, when the iron descended upon him; his arm, which he had instinctively thrown up, received it, and both bones were fractured.

After this he went beyond all bounds, and in a few days, on the au

thority of the coroner, he was certified insane, and placed by his friends under our charge.

"Since then he has only had one paroxysm, which indeed happened closely after his arrival, and was so violent as to require the whirlingchair. So far as we can judge, he appears to be now in a steady way of

recovery.

“We make a practice never to allude to the hallucinations of any patient. The allusions they make to it themselves are allowed to pass apparently altogether unremarked; while, by affording them other pursuits of an active and engrossing nature, we endeavor to lead them altogether from employing their thoughts on the topic. I considered it as well to mention this, in order that, as you will be constantly in his society, you may follow a course in consonance with our system.

"You will find he does clerk's business in the asylum; takes reports, keeps the journal, looks after the dieting, and affects to have a sharp eye over the keepers. Of course you will require to do all these duties yourself, though you will find him of amazing value to you in a variety of ways. You must take care that no historical work of any kind, no atlas, globes nor any newspapers or periodicals, come where they can possibly be seen by him. The time he is not occupied with his fancied duties you will find him devote to the perusal of books from my uncle's library, all regarding or bearing upon his own malady, such as Abercromby, Pinel, Reports of Commissioners on Lunatic Asylums, Quetelet, Dr. Hibbert's book, and a host of others; or to the study of botany, which he prosecutes with very great ardor. He is allowed to go about the fields as often as he chooses, but Jackson the keeper always accompanies him, on the pretext of carrying his plant-case, which we have purposely had made very clumsy, and inconvenient, as if to require such attendance.

"I should state to you that you must never betray the slightest evidence of timorousness when alone with him; for if you attend to the above instructions he is altogether harmless, and, moreover, a most agreeable companion; whilst the least appearance of such a feeling gives him great uneasiness; for madmen, however strong may be their own notions, have always a suspicion about what people think of them, and any indication of the kind on your part will make him very despondent, and probably for a considerable time divert him from the salutary pursuits he is at present so much engrossed with. You may be as obstinate as you like with him in any discussion, you will always find his manner marked by goodhumor and courtesy; whilst at the clear and masterly nature of his views on a multitude of subjects you will be struck with surprise.

"One of his grand accomplishments, I had almost forgot to say, is drawing. Some of his productions in this way are admirable. They ap pear so to me, though I must confess I have no particular taste in the art,

*This machine frequently used in the violent fits of maniacs, consists of a chair fixed upon a pivot, and so constructed that, with the unfortunate creature in it, it can be made to revolve with great rapidity, Its calming effects upon patients is complete at the time, but whether permanently useful must be questionable.