∗ No more distressing instance of exaggerated religious feeling is to be found in history than that of the poet Cowper. Hud he been brought up in a different school of thought he probably would not have placed on record, “My feelings are all of the intense kind. Satan is ever plying me with horrible visions and more horrible voices.” Google Scholar

∗ “Lord Houghton, in a well-turned speech at the centenary in honour of Miss Hope Scott, the sole survivor of the line, mentioned the kind of loneliness in which the names of all the great litterateurs stand. They have rarely left descendants. We have no Shakspeare, no Milton, no Hacon, no Newton, no Pope, no Byron. Italy has no Dante, no Petrarch, no Arioslo, DOAlfieri. Germany has no Goethe, no Schiller, no Heine. France has no Montaigne, no Descartes, no Voltaire, no Lamartine. There is no descendant known of Luther, Calvin, or John Knox. The fact is remarkable, and not favourable to the theory of an indefinite progress of humanity. The race of the very great does not multiply, while the race of the very little—sayany Irish hodman [or English curate], is as the sands of the sea.”—Spectator, Aug. 12, 1871. Google Scholar

† La Psychologie Morbide dans ses Rapports aneo la Philosophie de l'Histoire, ou de l'Influence des Nevropathies sur le Dynamisme Intellectuel. Par le Docteur J. Moreau (de Tours), Médicin de l'hospice de Bicêtre.—Paris. 1859. Google Scholar

∗ A great poet, according to Plato, could not compose before feeling himself filled as it were with divinity, and transported ont of himself, without, in fact, losing his reason. Great musicians do not compose while they are calm and sedate, but they are carried by a sort of harmonious coercion into a state of “fureur comme des bacchantes.” There are numberless facts on record in reference to the eccentricities of great men, showing the necessity of odd and whimsical surroundings, to condition that state of enthusiasm or inspiration from whose periodicity they have attained their celebrity. In this category are comprised Hayden, Handel, Mozart, Gluck, Sacchini, Sterne, Donizetti, Schiller, Guido-Reni, &c. These incidents illustrate (as Esquirol expresses it), “cette espèce d'état cataleptique de la pensée.” which isolates the man of genius from his fellow men, and constitutes, “le cachet, le signe pathognomonique des idées fixes.” Google Scholar

∗ In a private case which I had under treatment some time ago, where the whole ground floor of a gentleman's country residence was practically converted into an asylum, I had two skilled attendants in charge, under the supervision of a young resident medical man. One oE them, of large experience, plausible manner, and irreproachable nritten character, proved himself to be utterly unworthy of confidence, and had to be dismissed at a moment's notice. Google Scholar

∗ “A Plea for Convalescent Homes in Connection with Asylums for the Insane Poor.” By the Key. Henry Hawkins. “Journal of Mental Science,” April, 1871. Google Scholar