For twenty-one years the criminal lunatics of Scotland have been, with only one or two exceptions, confined in a branch or separate building of the General Prison, called the Department for Criminal Lunatics. This department was opened in October, 1846, under a public grant; and due inquiry having been made throughout the kingdom, all prisoners of the criminal lunatic class confined for life or during Her Majesty's pleasure were transferred thither in terms of Act 2 and 3 Viet., c. 42, and 7 and 8 Viet., c. 31.

The labours of the reformers of lunatic asylums in England have been beneficially felt in the remotest countries in the world. While in France, where the humane method of treatment was initiated, and in certain other continental countries, the amelioration in the con dition of the insane has been less conspicuous than could have been desired or expected in nations which have attained a brilliant de velopment in most of the other arts of civilisation, Eussia and the Scandinavian kingdoms have exhibited an earnest desire to avail themselves of the advantages of the most enlightened treatment.

Since public attention was directed to the mode of treating the insane practised at Gheel, much controversy has taken place both in this country and on the continent as to the value to be attached to the system. Alienists from all parts of the civilised world have visited the locality, and have recorded their opinions of its merits. These opinions have been almost as various as their authors are numerous, and have contained the most enthusiastic praise and the most emphatic condemnation. But the discussion seems now to have reached a point at which a reliable estimate of the chief peculiarities of the system, such as will be concurred in by the majority of those who have studied the subject, may be formed. A letter conveying a very favorable impression of the colony has been addressed to the editors of this Journal by Dr. Edmund Neuschler, of the Royal Lunatic Asylum at Zwiefalten in Wurtemberg, of which I present the following ranslation. I shall afterwards endeavour to indicate what appears to me to be the true view of the question.

When we reflect that the sciences of astronomy, physics, and chemistry have only recently got rid of the metaphysical spirit, we cannot wonder much that physiology is not yet entirely emancipated from the pernicious thraldom. It was plainly impossible that physiology should be cultivated in the spirit of the positive method of investigation while the sciences upon the advance of which itsadvance is dependent were not sciences at all, but clouds of idle andshifting fancies. But there has been another and weighty reason why the science dealing with the structure and functions of the organism has remained so long in a metaphysical bondage: because psychology, the last stronghold and the forlorn hope of the meta physical method, is an important branch of it. Metaphysicians have for at least two thousand years been supremely self-satisfied to evolve, from the unfathomable depths of the inner consciousness, ingenious mazes of vague and ill-defined words which they have dignified with the name of mental philosophy; and the consequence has been that the physiologist, when he came in the course of his inquiries to the brain, contented himself with the anatomical de scription of it, and never dreamed of studying its functions as the mental organ. By a prescriptive right, sanctioned by the authority of generations, mind belonged to the metaphysician; and it naturally seemed sacrilegious to venture a scientific step in such holy ground. Not only so, but the mischievous influence of the metaphysical spirit spread beyond the department of psychology, and infected more or less strongly all physiological inquiries. However, this state of things could not last in face of the active progress of positive science; the or ans and functions of the body became objects of positive investigation, and even the brain no longer escaped scientific study. So it has come to pass that the germs of a mental science having a physiological basis have appeared, and now threaten to disturb the ancient ascendancy of metaphysical mental philosophy. The present position of matters is this: there are two systems of philosophy dealing with the same subject, but not having the slightest connection one with the other, and cultivated according to different methods by different men-metaphysical mental philosophy and positive mental science. A man might be deeply learned in all the wisdom of the former, and yet entirely ignorant of the very meaning of the simplest facts of the latter. It is hardly worth while considering seriously at the present day which of these rival systems is likely to prevail over the other; one of them is the latest issue of the advance of positive science, has its foundations deep rooted in the relations of natural laws, and exhibits a promising growth; while the other has moved in an everlasting circle, has no better foundations than the clouds and conceits of men's thoughts, and exhibits symptoms of active decay. Now and then it is skilfully galvanized into a spasmodic semblance of life, but each artificially excited convulsion is plainly the fore runner of an increase of the inevitable paralysis. Much remains to be done, however, before we can claim acceptance for a positive mental science. Not only is our knowledge of the structure and functions of the brain very defective, but there is nothing like exact information to be had regarding its pathology. It has been the fashion to give the name of some disease to a group of symptoms, without attempting to connect these with particular diseased states of the nervous centres. The pathology of all the diseases of the nervous system is, it must be confessed, in a most unsatisfactory condition.