relates an instance where the imagination realised
the fiction of Swift in Gulliver's travel to
Brobdingnag, by magnifying to the eye ordinary
men to the stature and dimensions of giants.
The ear, too, by which we receive impressions of
"the airy tongues that syllable men's names,"
has been an endless organ of delusions, in sounds
musical as well as inharmonious. While some
men have believed themselves endowed with
the power of flying like birds through the air,
others have fancied that they possessed the
faculty of hanging in a state of suspended
animation, like bats. Many have imagined
themselves transmuted into wolves, dogs, cats, game-
cocks, cuckoos, pipkins, and teapots. To this
strange fancy, Pope thus alludes in describing
the Cave of Spleen, in the Rape of the Lock:

     Unnumbered things on either side are seen,
     Of bodies changed to various forms by spleen,
     Here living teapots stand, one arm held out,
     One bent—the handle this, and that the spout.
     A pipkin there, like Homer's tripod walks,
     Here sighs a jar, and there a goose-pie talks.

In a note on this passage, Bishop Warburton
states as a fact that an English lady of distinction
actually fancied herself a goose-pie. Strange
as these phantasies are, they are scarcely more
remarkable than the effects insanity produces
upon the sensation and nerves. It would seem
sometimes to deprive its victim of the sense of
cold, for it is common for a lunatic to tear off all
his clothes, the want of which he scarcely seems
to feel. It has also been found apparently to
deaden, and even extinguish, all sensations of
pain. There have been cases in which the
coldest bodies have been described as feeling
intensely hot, so that the impression of burning
would seem to follow from the slightest touch.
M. Marc describes a man who for many years
had been in the habit of licking the bare walls
of the apartment in which he lived, until he had
actually worn away the plaster. The man
himself accounted for this singular freak, by
declaring that he had been tasting and smelling
the most delicious and fragrant fruit.

Fanciful insanity, in its vivid succession of
images, its rapid capacity of invention, and its
aptitude to catch striking associations, occasionally
presents some of the attributes of genius.
Under its singular impulses, the naturally
ingenious and acute have sometimes become
astronomers without instruction, philosophers
without thought, and poets by immediate
inspiration. Amongst the ancients, monomaniacs
frequently appeared as prophets and sibyls; and
in the dark ages as wizards and witches,
demoniacs and vampires. Men have, before now,
gloried in assuming the attributes of Satan—
"accursed of God and man." Fear has
constantly been the parent of insanity. During
the reign of terror, many people fancied they
had been guillotined, and had acquired new
heads: either by the special gift of Providence,
or by exchange with others who had been
decapitated like themselves. To a ludicrous
instance of this nature, Tom Moore alludes in
his "Fudge Family in Paris:"

   Went to the madhouse, saw the man,
      Who thinks, poor wretch, that when the Fiend
   Of discord here, full riot ran,
      He like the rest was guillotined.
   But that when under Boney's reign
      (A more discreet though quite as strong one),
   The heads were all restored again,
      He in the scramble got a wrong one!
   Accordingly he still cries out,
      This strange head fits him most unpleasantly;
   And always runs, poor devil, about,
      Inquiring for his own incessantly.

In modern times we have had self-asserted
royal pretenders and royal personages victims of
vain or self-important insanity, who, carrying
straws in their hands, fancied that they were
sceptres, and that they swayed the world. These
cases have appeared in great numbers. When
Louis the Sixteenth was beheaded, the
hospitals of Paris were crowded with Dauphins
destined to succeed him on the throne; and the
mournful fate of the Duc D'Enghien
immediately produced many aspiring impersonators.
The military successes of Napoleon the First,
stimulated ambitious insanity in many men who
had been his soldiers. These, in their cells at
the Bicêtre, proclaimed themselves emperors.

It is certain that in America, and it is but too
probable that in England, the lunatic asylums
contain many unfortunate persons labouring
under delusions produced by overwrought
credulity, and the errant flights of an ill-regulated
fancy, misguided by "spirit media,"
professional and amateur, honest and dishonest. It
may be worth consideration at this time,
whether it is not quite as rational in a man to believe
himself made of glass, or to be firmly convinced
of his having assumed the shape and substance
of a pipkin, or a teapot, or a goose-pie, as to
derive his convictions of the immortality of the
soul from wretchedly indifferent juggling under
a table and cover in a dark room; or, to believe
that the spirits of the departed and beloved who
have passed through the awful change that
wrung the hearts of us, the bereaved survivors,
when we looked upon it in its terrible solemnity,
can be recalled out of eternity, at so much a
head, by Showmen.

OUT OF THE HOUSE OF BONDAGE.

MY mother died soon after I was born, and
I was petted by my father until the age of eight,
when I was sent to Canada for my education.
I remained under the care of a kind family at
Quebec until I had attained the age of sixteen,
when my father called me home to keep house
for him, as he was very lonely, and his health
was giving way.

My father had desired that I should be taught
by the best masters that could be obtained, and
no expense was to be spared in my education.

I had lived a happy life in Canada, and Mrs.
Summers, the lady under whose care I had
been placed, loved me, I really believe, almost
as well as she did her own daughter. She was
most unwilling to part with me, and sought to