Thus among the ancients suicide was so far from being deemed a censurable action, that many instilled its profits, and gave it public approbation. Nor has it wanted modern advocates; and if pious, wise, and prudent persons have called it wrong, others who pleaded most strenuously in its favour have sealed their arguments with self-destruction.*

* A noted example is seen in the fate of Robeck, perhaps the most able advocate for suicide who has ever written, though his work be not in a style to move the passions. Robeck was born of respectable parentage at Calmar, a Swedish town on the Baltic, in the year 1672, and studied at the university of Upsal. Endowed with a vigorous natural genius, full of ardent expectations, and impatient of attaining his objects, he forsook his own country in disgust for the want of patronage, and in 1705 became a priest of the order of Jesuits in Vienna. He resided a long time there and in Italy, but tiring of the duties of his office, he endeavoured to obtain permission to return home, in which being disappointed, he went to Rinteln, Hamburgh, and Bremen, about the year 1734. He then wrote to a Professor of the university in the first of these towns, that he was approaching the age of 64: that he felt his strength daily declining, and his mind overwhelmed with melancholy: he was about to depart on a journey, he said, which he apprehended would be his last. He desired that his manuscripts. might be published, and his books given to the university. Soon afterwards dressing himself neatly, he entered a yawl alone, and in a short time his body was cast up by the waters within a few miles of Bremen. Robeck shows himself well acquainted with Scripture, and other ancient history. He pleads with great energy in favour of suicide, maintaining that what is unlawful at one time may become lawful at another: that suicide resulting from necessity may be relief; and although man may be put like a soldier to keep his station, it is

There are few who have lived any time in the world at the present day, who cannot number one or more self-destroyers within their own immediate knowledge: there are few who can penetrate into ancient or modern history, without beholding a multitude rising in fearful array before them. We deplore the fatal act whereby they have robbed themselves of existence: we wonder how they have been forsaken by self-command, and led so far astray: that they have brought distress on their kindred, and reproach on their name. But probing more deeply into the source of such catastrophes, perhaps we should rather incline to palliate their precipitation, or convert our censure to pity.

If mankind permit the passions of the mind to take the helm instead of reason, and try to guide their mortal course, surely some one more unruly than the rest, or less tempered by controul, may carry them like a false pilot to shipwreck on the rocks of suicide.

On retracing all the causes of this fatal act, they are seen to originate in the unconquerable influence of some baneful prepossession alienating its agent from himself. For whether he rages in madness,

inconsistent with the equity and wisdom of the Deity, that he should desire him to remain when existence becomes useless. His work, now rare, is accompanied by elaborate notes, wherein it is singular the editor endeavours to combat almost all the opinions advanced in the text. It appears under the title " De Morte Voluntaria Philosophorum et bonorum virorum etiam Judæorum et Christianorum," Rintelii, 1736, in 4.

or droops in melancholy, he is no longer under selfcontroul which keeps his safety, but yields to that which prompts his ruin.

Yet in ascertaining the real source of suicide, let us beware of rash conclusions; for sometimes as certain stages of the passions themselves exhibit a complication of features, so does it appear under many aspects which seem ready to confound and mislead the spectator. Self-destruction likewise ensues under that condition where all the passions most prone to disturb human tranquillity seem quiescent, save impatience only to hasten away. *

More than one catastrophe of this description has fallen within the notice of the author of these pages; by which it is to be understood that he was either intimately acquainted with the suicides themselves, or familiar with their name and character. But he must own in sincerity, that few were referable to reasons which, in so far as he could ascertain, should have led to such a horrid alternative, although illustrative of the great diversity of operating causes. With a single exception all were of

Spiess, Biography of Suicides.-Has this author founded his work on well-established facts, or does he wander into the regions of imagination? Of forty-nine persons falling by suicide, sixteen committed it from love; six from indigence; three from ambition; two from monastic causes; six from love and shame; from the dread of disgrace; from an affront; from fanaticism; the fear of death; softness of disposition; melancholy; and nine from various reasons.

men, to almost the whole of whom a lot far more comfortable had fallen than is assigned to the great majority of the human race. There seemed to be little for them to desire. Three enjoyed ample fortunes, and dwelt in the bosom of their families in apparent content and felicity. Of these, one was supposed to be tinctured with insanity; another, from being an infidel, had occasional abstractions of religious gloom, but the reason of neither was affected at the moment; the third held a distinguished official situation, from which he derived constant occupation: a fourth suicide had a predisposition to melancholy: a fifth terminated his life, from the dread of indigence, affording a cruel example of neglected talents: a sixth, an officer in the army of penurious habits, was probably under a similar apprehension and a seventh, a person in humble life, seems without the reality to have been affected in the same manner. Of two brothers, one died thus from a sudden mercantile embarrassment; the other, unless from melancholy, without any obvious inducement: the same fate was ascribed to their father, a very acute and intelligent man: a third brother attempted it; and an uncle, though not by the father's side, had been likewise a self-destroyer. The female sacrificed herself on account of domestic infelicity. Perhaps the intellects of some of these suicides may have been slightly affected; but the real occasion of others it may be was simply weariness of life. Three were somewhat advanced in years.

But does the suicide of the sane ever originate unless from sorrow? Can those be held to be masters of themselves, whom passion or prejudice so much alienates, that they are ready to rush into eternity?

These questions cannot be discussed at present; nor can a regular series of suicides be adduced, in order to illustrate the passions, or the passions be arranged for the illustration of suicide. It would engross a history of all the generations of the human race. But examples of suicide from the whole series and combination of the stronger passions of the mind, as resolving into one final incentive, certainly could be quoted; showing them to be more numerous according as the vehemence of some particular passion seizes the faster on mankind.

The same reasoning, however, regarding the evolution of the passions, is inapplicable here; for there a regular determinate progress of nature is fulfilling a great object; whereas self-destruction is overturning the laws which she so forcibly lays down in favour of self-preservation.

§ 1. Suicide from Tadium Vitæ.-Many reputable authorities have sought one main source of suicide in climate, and particularly in that of Britain, where this catastrophe is believed to be more common than in any part of the globe. Doubtless as darkness sinks the soul, for then is living nature stilled, a dense or dull and humid atmosphere may