During the last four years, as medical officer in an asylum sufficiently populous to offer a fairly wide field for study, but not too large to prevent each individual case from receiving its own share of investigation, no subject has attracted me more than the occurrence of delusions of exaltation and optimism in the Insanity of Chronic Alcoholism. And this mainly for two reasons, viz., the divergence of opinion of good authorities as to the frequency of the association of such ideas with this particular class of insanity, and the difficulty which not seldom attends the accurate recognition of their true character and import. If in this paper I can report the salient features of these cases, they may, perhaps, have an interest to others to whom they present no difficulties in diagnosis; and if the inferences that are drawn from them seem occasionally to deviate from those of writers of experience, it must be remembered that the cases are too few to admit of any but tentative statements, and that such will be put forward as suggestions and not as dogmas, though at the same time the accuracy of the facts and descriptions from which they are deduced can be guaranteed.