the present sort. In such a house assurance
might be had that the discharged patients are
reasonably safe against those relapses which are
now perpetually bringing them to the bar of our
courts for wild, distressing crimes. There are a
thousand suicides among us every year, of which
the greater number come of an uncontrollable
diseased impulse.

There never will be room for all who require
treatment. Perverse temper, wrong-headed
action, undue distress over trifles, and almost
uncontrollable impulses to do this or that wild
thing, never can, to their full extent, be
practically recognised as what they are. It is, on
the whole, quite right and necessary to consider
them as points of character to which a full
responsibilityattaches. We only urge, in aid of
Mr. Gaskell's argument, a consideration that
should soften very greatly our impression of the
difference between soundness and  unsoundness
of mind. If houses of voluntary retirement,
under any sense of infirmity or trial of mind,
are to be established, let us have with them, we
say, a fair sense of the fact that in variety and
extent mental disorder is like bodily disorder,
and that there is a wide range of mental as of
bodily affection very far short of mutilation,
nay, that there are whole pieces of mind that
many a man contrives to do without, as he might
do without an arm or an eye, or both his eyes.
Let men feel that there is a common lot to them
all in mental as in bodily affliction, and let nobody
suppose that, although like people in hospital
he also is liable to his headaches and sicknesses,
his mind never feels any of the infirmity over
which science and humanity keep watch in
lunatic asylums. We must not only dismiss the
strait-waistcoats and the chains, but also much of
the old vague horror of insanity. In this, as in
other matters, there is to be established a yet closer
sense of fellowship among men than was recognised
in the old days that are gone. Who knows?
We may live to see a Committee of Physicians
managing a Sulky Club, a Physician taking out
his license for an Hotel of the Thousand Passions,
and the best half of the town may spend its
holiday under the doctor in a School for Scandal.

The extent of the old error is suggested by
the phrase left to us for insanity, that it is a
man's being "out of his mind," or "beside
himself." He and his mind are, of course, not
parted, but his mind is out of some part of its
health, and, as was said at starting, I should
like to know how many people in the world have
absolutely healthy minds.

Again, however, let it be urged that this view
of the general condition of men's brains
contracts instead of extending the bounds within
which pleas of insanity are justifiable in bar of
criminal responsibility. No man would commit
a wilful crime being right minded; and as long
as a man is wrong minded he is best warned
into self-restraint by certainty of penalty for
hurt indicted on his neighbours. Let the pleas
of infirmity be met by the general persuasion
that we are all more or less infirm, and let us
abide by the wholesome maxim of law, that
every offender must be answerable for a crime
of which he has sense enough to know that he
committed it. To knock out a man's brains
under the real belief that one is breaking a glass
bottle, is, for example, the only kind of insanity
that should protect homicide from punishment.

THE LAST NEW SAINT.

UNTIL an Englishman has resided for a while
out of Great Britain, he does not appreciate how
national an institution is his habit of assembling
in public meeting. Whether he has a censure to
pass, a vote of praise and thanks to express, a
right to enforce, or an abuse to abolish, he
commences his task by convening his compeers
in public meeting. No Englishman, therefore, will
blame the convocation of the public for the
furtherance of interests, or the announcement of
opinions, which may be supposed to be connected
with the general welfare.

But there are two ways of undertaking an
enterprise — a straightforward way, and a crooked
way.  With us, an object that is proposed to be
obtained through the influence of general opinion
must be openly attacked boldly in the face, or it
had better be left to repose in quiet. We make
a regular siege on the obnoxious principles; we
fire off our motions, our speeches, our resolutions,
straight at the mark, instead of employing
any of the stratagems of military tactics.
We want to abolish the corn-laws, and we call a
meeting for their abolition, in which the whole
proceedings are consistently directed to that end,
and to nothing else. We do not call a meeting avowedly
for the abolition of the corn-laws, but indirectly
for the abolition of the House of Lords. Our
public meetings are eminently straightforward.

But we can imagine reunions of agitators
which might be less frank and sincere in their
character. Bodies of men will sometimes offer t
he concentrated expression of the character of
the individuals of whom they are composed. If
the leading members, singly, are men of tortuous
and mole-like habits, it is possible that a meeting,
while professing to point its muzzle to the right,
will be really discharging its grape-shot tot.he left.

There has just closed (not in the Queen's
dominions) a party manifestation, of which it is
not harsh to say that it means more than it
openly announces. It can hardly be called a
public meeting, because there was no free
discussion; in spirit, it was more like the parading
of our operatives through the streets, six or
eight abreast, in times of trouble or penury.
Three-and-twenty archbishops and bishops,
including a cardinal, assembled at Arras, to walk
about the town in procession and make a grand
display of relics, vestments, trade guilds with
images of their patron saints, and school children
in fancy costume. The various approaches to the
city were like the road to Epsom races; people
on foot, people on donkeys; people, thirty and
more, crammed into huge Flemish waggons;
people in elegant private carriages; people in
tumbrils used for manure, swept and garnished for
the occasion; people by railway; people by canal.