up," was so very like. Nor did the first glance into the interior efface the resemblance. Like Mrs. Browning's latter-day epic, "Lucile" is a modern metrical romance, or rather a versified novel, and deals freely and forcibly with the current issues of social and individual life. It is even

more easy-going and jaunty in its colloquial slap-dash than the other. This effect is rendered the more palpable by the metre which is selected, not too happily, we think, for so long a work. Twelve cantos of canter, without once subsiding into a trot, much less into a walking pace, are and must be trying to the reader, whatever they may have been to the writer. Canter is surely a fair description of the movement of such lines as—

Now in May Fair, of course-in the fair month of May*—
When all things in abundance make London so gay;
When street-strawberries are sold, piled in pottles like sheaves,
And young ladies are sold for the strawberry-leaves;†
When cards, invitations, and three-corner'd notes
Fly about like white butterflies-gay little motes
In the sunbeam of Fashion; and even Blue Books

Take a heavy-wing'd flight, and grow busy as rooks, &c.

In his Dedication "To My Father," the writer speaks of himself as abandoning in this poem those forms of verse with which he had most familiarised his thoughts, and as endeavouring to follow a path on which he could discover no footprints before him, either to guide or to warn. The enterprising novelty of the essay may have been one of its main attractions to the adventurer; but we are bound to confess that, admirably as this type of versification embodies certain of his moods, and harmoniously as it expresses some of his conceptions and reflections, it is felt at times to be exceptionable and not i' the vein-out of time, as a musician would say ;-out of place; occasionally, too, out of breath. At the same time we cannot but own the surprising mastery the poet displays over the plastic potentialities of this metre-the fluent, flexible uses to which he turns it, from grave to gay, from lively to severe-whether in gorgeous description of sunset among the mountains, or trivial record of boudoir badinage-whether in some impassioned outburst of irrepressible anguish, or some sarcastic photograph of matter-of-fact manhood. Such essential variety under the constraints of a form so apparently monotonous, it is a rare triumph to have achieved.

Into the story of Lucile we do not propose to enter. Suffice it here to

*By the way, our author has a fondness for this sort of play upon words, which constitutes, we may say, one of his minor mannerisms. Thus Matilda is described (p. 22)

"As airy and blithe as a blithe bird in air.”

So again this couplet, at p. 32, of one who

"Resigning the power he lack'd power to support,
Turns his back upon courts, with a sneer at the court.”

Or again, p. 166, of the bliss

"Which his science divine seem'd divinely to miss."

Or, p. 211, of one blest

“With a pretty young wife, and a pretty full purse.” † Another instance of the jeux-de-mots just indicated.

intimate the conclusion, which bears witness to the nature of her mission, the mission of genius on earth-viz.,

To uplift,

Purify, and confirm by its own gracious gift,

The world, in despite of the world's dull endeavours
To degrade, and drag down, and oppose it for ever.
The mission of genius: to watch, and to wait,
To renew, to redeem, and to regenerate.
The mission of woman on earth! to give birth
To the mercy of Heaven descending on earth.
The mission of woman: permitted to bruise
The head of the serpent, and sweetly infuse,
Through the sorrow and sin of earth's register'd curse,
The blessing which mitigates all: born to nurse,

And to soothe, and to solace, to help and to heal

The sick world that leans on her. This was Lucile. (p. 359.)

Her portrait is painted, under several aspects, in colours of the richest,-
see pp. 13, 45, 69, 81, &c. That of the English beauty, Miss Darcy,
is equally artistic and graceful in its way. Lord Alfred and the Duc de
Luvois are, each of them, elaborate studies of character, and portrayed
with not less delicacy of detail than breadth of outline.
Sir Ridley
Mac Nab is a bit of ugly real life, a hardly caricatured contemporary of
Sir John Dean Paul and the "religious world" that banks with him. We
have incidental sketches, too, such as these of

a lady aggressively fat,
Who, fierce as a female Leviathan, sat
By another that looked like a needle, all steel
And tenuity—“Luvois will marry Lucile ?"
The needle seem'd jerk'd by a virulent twitch,
As though it were bent upon driving a stitch
Thro' somebody's character,-

and so on. That the author can be trenchant in satire, bitter in invective, vehement in denunciation, his readers know of old; nor will he let them forget it in his present volume. Irony, as ever, is one of his pleasant playthings, which he hardly knows how to let go, when once (as so frequently) the humour is on him. But he can be solemnly in earnest as well, and sometimes verges on the mystical, and even loses his way in the dim religious obscure. In exuberant opulence of the descriptive faculty -with its word-painting prowess so vigorously developed his verses are as markworthy as ever; from their scattered side-scene glimpses might be composed a panorama of the picturesque. Still, we are persuaded his best poem remains to be written; and it will be none the worse for not being written too soon. His facility is manifestly something prodigious; nor is it of the sort of facility called fatal; but it will serve its master all the more effectively if, as Prospero did to Ariel, he hold it in sovran sway, and bind it to do his higher behests.

THE STATE OF LUNACY.*

To expound the "state of lunacy," would appear, at the first blush, a task of no small magnitude. But when we come to understand that by such an exposition it is not meant to unfold the new phases of mental aberration induced by the evolution of time and conditions of humanity, or by the incidents of the day, as exemplified in High Church ecstatics and Low Church obstinacy, in budget and treaty vagaries, in TurcoRussian antipathies, Hungarian aspirations, Austrian malversations, Schleswig-Holstein perplexities, Italian frenzies and Napoleonic enigmas, but simply to treat of the existing state of the provisions for the insane, and the enactments of the Legislature for the protection of those so sorely afflicted, we feel that the field of inquiry becomes more limited, and the chances of arriving at a few sane conclusions is very much increased.

There are many difficulties in the way of arriving at a correct knowledge of the number of insane in this our country alone, and which combine to render official returns imperfect. The number of unreported "private" lunatics, criminal lunatics in prison, and the fact that pauper lunatics are not all enumerated in official returns, all contribute to these difficulties, but taking all these into estimation, Dr. Arlidge says the figures stood thus on the 1st of January, 1858:

Dr. Arlidge estimates the annual gross increase of lunatics at 1600 per annum; hence, on the 1st of January, 1859, there would be 41,157, and on the 1st of January of the present year some 42,757, or nigh 42,000 -in round numbers, for many must die off-persons of unsound mind, or to employ the legal phraseology, lunatics and idiots. "It perhaps should be explained," Dr. Arlidge adds, " and more particularly with reference to those detained in workhouses, or supported by their parishes at their own houses, that, besides idiots, or those congenitally deficient, a very large proportion of them is composed of weak and imbecile folk, who would, in olden times, have been considered and called "fools," and not lunatics, and been let mix with their fellow-men, serve as their sport or their dupes, and exhibit their hatred and revenge by malicious mischief and fiendish cruelty. But, thanks to modern civilisation and benevolence, these poor creatures are rightly looked upon as proper objects for the supervision, tending, and kindness of those whom Providence has favoured with a higher degree of intelligence. This act of philanthropy, effected at a great cost, elevates at the same time very materially the ratio of insane persons to the population, and thereby gives cause of alarm at the prevalence of mental disorder, and makes our sanitary statistics contrast

* On the State of Lunacy, and the Legal Provision for the Insane, with Observations on the Construction and Organisation of Asylums. By John T. Arlidge, M.B. (Lond.), &c. John Churchill.

unfavourably with those of foreign lands, where the same class of the sick poor has not been so diligently sought out and brought together, with a view to their moral and material well-being."

If the materials for the determination of the number of insane are not perfect, equally unsatisfactory are the means for calculating the increase of insanity. Dr. Arlidge, after discussing these materials, such as they are, with considerable ability and perfect impartiality, arrives, as we have seen, at the conclusion that the amount may be estimated at 1600 per annum. At the same time, in answer to the question, " Has there been an increase of the annual number of persons attacked with lunacy during past years ?" and taking into consideration how much the accommodation for the insane, and the acquaintance with their numbers has in consequence increased, still Dr. Arlidge avers that there would appear to be no actual progressive increase of the disease in the community, at all events during the past four years.

We next come to the state of the present provision of the insane in asylums, and which the commissioners of lunacy themselves declare to be inadequate. Upon this point Dr. Arlidge agrees with the commissioners, and he would have not only all lunatic inmates of workhouses provided for in asylums, but he would also have the poor demented patients and idiots distributed through the homes of our poorer classes and peasantry similarly provided for-in fact, public asylum accommodation for all the pauper poor, and which would necessitate room being provided for 33,000 instead of 17,000, as at present, or, in other words, it would be required to more than double the present provision in asylums for pauper lunatics to give room for all, and to meet the rapid annual rate of accumulation! But it might be asked, where is this to stop? The pressure of the poorrates is already considerable, and, supposing even the highly desirablenay, the imperiously necessary step of an equalisation being effected, still, as persons of unsound mind live as long as persons of sound mind, and when in asylums, removed from all care and anxiety for their sustenance, and separated from drink and other injurious excesses, they have much better chances of prolonged life than the generality of persons, and they go on at the same time increasing at the rate of 1600 a year, it would appear as if a time must come when the half of the comparatively sane population (for we are so far phrenologists as to believe no one perfectly sane, except where there is a perfect balancing of organs, and incessant control and subjugation of intellect, morality, and propensities, even among the commissioners of lunacy themselves) will have to toil for the support of the other positively insane half!

This is not a very cheering prospect, and it is happily alleviated by other considerations connected with the question of the curability of insanity. Although this involves the consideration of all the causes operating to diminish that curability, such as detention of patients in their own homes, detention of patients in workhouses, and the counteracting causes peculiar to asylums themselves-in fact, full consideration of the provisions for the insane, and an investigation into the insufficiency and defects of the present organisation of asylums-still it may be premised that insanity is a very curable disorder if it be only brought under early treatment. American physicians go so far as to assert that it is curable in the proportion of ninety per cent., and appeal to their asylum statistics to Aug.-VOL. CXIX. NO. CCCCLXXVI.

21

establish the assertion. But there are favourable circumstances, connected with American practice which do not obtain in this country. Asylums are not branded as "pauper," but are called "state asylums;" there is no feeling of imaginary family discredit in sending patients for treatment, and, above all, every facility is given for immediate attention to temporary cases, the consequence of the abuse of alcoholic drinks, of overwrought brain, and general excitement. There is some little hope, then, that the march of amelioration in the treatment and curability of insanity, by a better organisation of asylums, will keep pace with the increase of insanity itself, and, with the blessing of God, may avert so sad a state of things as we have ventured to surmise; but if such is to be brought about. we must look to the labours of enlightened physicians, as in the instance of Dr. Arlidge now before us, backed by all the influence of the commissioners, headed by so eminent a philanthropist as the Earl of Shaftesbury. It is not in our power to enter here, as we should wish to do, into the discussion of the various causes operating evilly in diminishing the curability of insanity in the systems pursued in this country, the absence and negleet of curative influences at home, delay in transmitting patients for treatment, impediments to transmission and reception, the demoralising and degrading effects of the pauper test, the detention of paupers in workhouses, boarding of pauper lunatics with strangers, their distribution in cottage homes, improper treatment previous to admission in asylums, and, lastly, the causes operating inju riously in asylums themselves, as deficient medical staff, degeneration of management into routine, delegation of duties to attendants, and, above all, the absurdity of large, extravagant, and unmanageable asylums. There should, Dr. Arlidge justly argues, be a limit fixed to the size of asylums, there should be efficiency in the medical staff, there should be separate asylums for the more recent, and for chronic or old standing cases there should be every facility for the immediate treatment of the former, a little expense in time may save a large amount ultimatelyand, if there was an equalisation of rating, it would be in the equal interest of all parts of the country alike to cure, and not merely to transpose a burden from one portion of the country to another. There should be a separate provision made for epileptics and idiots, there should be a correct registration of lunatics; district medical officers, such as exist in Germany and Italy, should be appointed, and, above all, the number and character of the commissioners should be reformed. It is not because an author has eloquently upheld the patriots of the Commonwealth that he should become an efficient commissioner in lunacy; not even a twice noble philanthropy can ensure efficiency, it requires at once an elementary and a sound physiological and psychological education before efficiency can be obtained in such peculiar duties as evolve upon commissioners in lunacy, and which comprise the treatment of the insane and the construction, arrangement, and supervising of asylums. Nor are magistrates or members of boards of guardians more effectual visitors than literary and philanthropic commissioners. The duties of the present board might, then, very well be limited to action as a fixed central commission, or council, assisted by a corps of competent assistant commissioners, specially charged with the duties of visitation, inspection, and reporting, as also with the carrying out of the resolutions determined on by the deliberative council.