animal instincts are beyond his control. When he takes food he eats to such repletion that his servants have to remove the viands; and he is described to suffer from satyriasis. Upon this last feature the crisis of the story turns. An interview is brought about with his affiancé, upon whom he commits an indecent assault. Poor Sophie dies delirious from the shame and grief, and her death produces in Fremdling repentance or cure, and he takes his exit in the odour of right feeling and good deeds. This "deus ex machinâ" termination throws discredit upon the authenticity of the story. But who is the man who dare exhibit such repulsive mysteries to public view, unless in the spirit of good faith and substantial veracity? We will not believe that the man who could pen the high and just sentiments that pervade "The Metaphysicians," could invent such a story as that which serves as the vehicle of his opinions, much less that he could assert it to be a true story, with which conscience and a sacred duty compelled him to warn and instruct his fellow men. Fremdling also, he says, looked to him for the publication of his case. When dying, he says, "To the psychological enquirer I sit in view, with the elements of his study distinctly exhibited, like one of those preparations which are employed to assist the physiological student. I exhibit prominently only one, or at most two, of the three aspects of our conscious being at a time, the others, or the other, being meanwhile in abeyance."

Whether real or imaginary, Harold Fremdling presents a fine delineation of an intellectual sensualist, in whom the moral sentiments are so far weakened as to form a variety of mental alienation.

Independent of the "case," the memoir is replete with interest to the psychological reader, from the opinions and discussions upon mental philosophy which it contains. We shall extract some examples. The following is an objection to the claims of phrenology to be considered a science, which we have ourselves pointed out:

"How is it possible, even supposing the facts which are to establish the existence of all the organs that Dr. Spurzheim has mapped out upon the human skull-even, I say supposing the facts to be easily collectable, how is it possible that in so short a time as he has been at work they could have been collected? It is evident that he has mapped out the organs first, taking some that had been made tolerably probable by his more patient coadjutor Gall, and has left the proof of these organs to come with time. Now suppose that in twenty years from the present moment, there should be little or no change in this map-work of the skull, will

not such permanence be a proof that the doctrine admits not of being established in its details by an indication of facts but rests only on strong probability or likelihood? And for my own part, I am quite ready to listen to the doctrine if no stronger ground is claimed for it; I believe and have long believed that if we could come at the differences of brain and nerve, and other parts of the animal organization among men, we should always find these differences to be in exact correspondence with the differences of what we call mind among them."

The following, on the theory of a spiritual mind as a base for the belief in immortality, occurs in a discussion on Scotch and German metaphysics:

"I affirm," said Mr. Gordon, "that in denying the reality of mind, you take away from the human race the ground of our exist

ence after death."

"To that remark," replied my father, "I have first to say, that I do not deny the reality of mind: what I say, is, that no such thing as mind offers itself to my present powers of observation; but I neither affirm nor deny that such a thing exists."

"What!" cried the Scotchman with warmth, "have you no present experience of mind, when you reflect, and reason, and conclude? How can the body do all this?

"Pardon me, Mr. Gordon: you are begging the whole question," said my father. "What I affirm is this-that MAN is created with powers of reflection, reasoning, and so forth; and what I deny is, that either the body as you define it or the mind as you define it, is the man."

"But the body is, at least, a reality," said Mr. Gordon, "and death clearly teaches us that the powers of thought and reasoning belong not to it. The body cannot do without the mind."

"And how do you know that the mind can do without the body? Let us, Mr. Gordon, except for mere ordinary conversational purposes, let us dispense with both words, and speak of our subject under the one name MAN. Now, why do I take away the ground of our existence after death, by refusing to admit, as a scientific truth, your division of man into two substances? "

"Because, if the carcase which he leaves behind is not immortal -(and who will say that it is ?-) there is nothing immortal if there exists not another substance distinct from the carcase, and now separated from it."

"Well; that I am aware is the common way of speaking on the subject; and as a mode of understanding what indeed lies beyond our human knowledge, I do not object to it. I object to it only when it pretends to bring the fact of man's immortality within the compass not of our belief, but of our comprehension and knowledge. And affirming it to be a matter of belief only, I feel myself at liberty to apprehend the credible fact in the way that satisfies me best. Some may apprehend it best when explained in Plato's

manner, but, for my part, I prefer that of Paul, as coming nearer to the analogies of all created things that I am acquainted with; I believe that, in dying, man is sown like seed in order to rise again, if fit to rise; and that he will rise, not a mind without a body, or a body without a mind, but a new and glorified creature altogether. Permit me to say further, that if metaphysicians must reduce man to an abstraction, and use the word implying that abstraction as a name for the concrete, it would, I think, be far preferable to select the term Will for the purpose, and not the term Mind; for then we should understand why man, and man alone among the animals is immortal. If mind is the ground of immortality, why should not brutes be immortal? Who has found out the line which separates the lowest grade of human, from the highest of brute mind! No wonder that Thomas Brown, perhaps the clearest headed of your Scottish metaphysicians, should have confessed to his familiar friends that he believed the mind in either case to be immortal. But if the subjugation of the Will to a higher principal than animal instinct-if the subjugation of the animal will, to the instructed human will,—if this be asserted as the ground of man's immortality, we can understand why the existence of brutes should terminate with this life, but that man, if duly prepared, should die now, only to rise, the same being glorified, in another sphere of action."

When Harold has been used up in the wicked service of Messalina, he writes to his friend and biographer, "All hope is gone. I have neither hope nor fear, love nor hate. I have only intellect and appetites. I know the good and evil of life; but I know, at the same time, that the good is beyond my reach, and I wallow in evil as my only good. My change of person is correspondent: what was said of the French philosopher is literally true of me:

"I am so wicked, profligate, and thin,

I look like Milton's Devil, Death, and Sin.'" On this the writer makes an interesting psychological com

ment:

"The immediate impression which this letter made on me will doubtless be the reader's :-Harold was insane. The case did not seem without a parallel. In the eighty-eighth number of "THE ADVENTURER," Hawkesworth records the authenticated monomania of one Simon Brown, "a dissenting minister of eminent intellectual abilities, who, refusing to join any longer the duties of his function, assigned with great reluctance to those who asked the reason, the following cause-That he had fallen under the sensible displeasure of God, who had caused his rational soul to perish, and had left him only an animal life, in common with brutes." This man, Hawkesworth goes on to record, during the period of his

insanity, wrote A Defence of the Religion of Nature, and the Christian Revelation, in answer to Tindal's Christianity as old as the Creation; a work allowed at that time to be the best which the controversy had produced; while a dedication to Queen Caroline, the consort of George II., which the friends of the monomaniac suppressed, though they preserved the copy as Hawkesworth gives it, places the character of his calamity beyond doubt or question."

This interpretation of his condition, however, was refuted by Fremdling himself:

"In reply, then, to my suggestion that his disease was a species of insanity which good advice might cure, I understood him to say that from ordinary insanity he was perfectly free. He denied that his case resembled that of Simon Brown, whose monomania arose out of the usual cause, an overwrought imagination on one particular exciting subject. His own defect, he averred, was an extinct, an exhausted imagination.

He declared that there was nothing left in him of the active principle, whatever it be, that keeps in motion the higher elements of our human nature-that gives a colouring to this scene of things, and raises joy, and grief, and hope, and fear :-he had spent it all; he had allowed the current to flow with an impetuosity unexampled in men of ordinary constitution, had allowed it to be mingled with, and be absorbed, and corrupted by, the current of the appetites, till at length the source of of the former current became dry, and nothing remained to him but the intellect and the appetites.

We require imagination; for, without it, the passions which urge us to action would never be moved, or would, as in him, become stagnant; and we are made liable to passions, because by improving and directing them, we adapt our nature to a higher state of being."

We trust we have quoted enough to send our readers to the memoir itself. It is written with considerable artistic power, and if the tale be true, with good taste and earnest feeling. The leading idea of the biography is decidedly original. Such an instance of mental perversion has never before been depicted. Moreover, there is this novelty, that it traces with pity and gentleness, but without reserve, the decadence of a mind which, under more favourable circumstances, might have risen as high as its actual fall was low. The evident feeling of the writer is, that it was the premature stimulus of metaphysical science, and not the hot blood of the south, which wrecked the probity and worth of his gifted companion. He seems to repeat throughout—

"Ah! what a noble mind was then undone,

When science self-destroyed her favorite son." To the reader uninfluenced by the endearing associations

which biased the judgment of the author of the memoir, the unvarnished account of Fremdling's career would appear wonderfully like that of a sensual, unprincipled scoundrel, who did not choose to place any check upon the indulgence of his passions. The critical history of his education compels a more lenient judgment, and substitutes pity for indignation. Alas! how often would this be the case with those whom we punish as obnoxious to the laws of God and man, if man could, with perfect and comprehensive survey, take in the view of all the influences which lead to crime. The Great Judge can and will do so, and the fullness of his knowledge will be the base of his mercy.

The Eighth Report of the Inspectors of Lunatic Asylums in Ireland to the Lord Lieutenant. Presented to both Houses of Parliament by Command of Her Majesty, 1857.

Owing to a railway accident, which for the last eighteen months has deprived the government of the experienced and valuable services of Dr. White, and which has subsequently led to his retirement, the eighth report on the Irish Asylums has emanated from Dr. Nugent alone, who for that lengthened period, appears to have discharged all the duties of the Asylumn's Office. The report is signed by Dr. Nugent for himself and colleague, at a date shortly before Dr. White's retirement, and the signature is followed by this note.

"It is with feelings of sincere regret I have here to state, that during the last six months, included in the period of this report, the Lunatic Asylum's Office was deprived of the experience and assiduous attention of my respected colleague, in consequence of a severe accident which occurred to him when on a tour of inspection. The professional character of Dr. White is duly appreciated by the public; for me, a friend who valued his private worth, it only remains to add, that the uniform kindliness of his manner simply indicated the benevolence of his disposition. -J. N."

Dr. Nugent refers in commencing, to the Commission which is now "examining the whole subject of lunacy in Ireland," and states that "we entertain some hesitation as to whether it might not be more advisable, to leave the function of reporting