that period, the number of insane persons in
England and Wales has more than doubled,
and the urgency of suggestion for their proper
care has increased in the same proportion.

The Acts 8th & 9th Vict. (cap. 100 & 126),
by augmenting the powers and extending the
jurisdiction of the Commissioners of Lunacy,
making a wholesome step towards the full
and efficient superintendence of the State,
have done much good. "Houses" have, to
some extent, been set in order, and their
arrangements and regulations have been
compelled into accordance with the requirements
of visitors, more scrupulous and intelligent
than those to which they had been previously
accustomed. The evils of a bad system have
been mitigated; but the bad system exists.

The complete equipment of a lunatic asylum,
in accordance with the demands of modern
science, requires space, and involves outlay
that can only be afforded where the payments
received from a large number of patients
warrant the establishment of the asylum on
an ample scale. Now, at the period which
we have taken for illustration, on New Year's
Day, 1850, the two thousand six hundred and
seventy-seven patients, for whose care
payment was made by their friends, and for
whose reception only private houses were
provided, were distributed in one hundred
and thirty-six of these houses: forty-five of
the number being situated in metropolitan
districts, and ninety-one scattered about the
country. It appears, therefore, that there
was an average of not more than nineteen or
twenty patients in each licensed house. Of
these licensed houses, again, forty-one also
admitted paupers. It requires the co-
operation, not of nineteen or twenty, but of at
least a hundred patients to obtain for the
good of each the full accommodation which
the care and cure of lunacy require. It is
only by the establishment of ample and well-
constituted asylums controlled by the State,
that such accommodation can be furnished
to all those by whom it is required.

Towards the close of the last year, it was
stated by the Chairman of our Commissioners
in Lunacy, the Earl of Shaftesbury, that
"Some private asylums had undoubtedly men
of experience at their head, and he laid an
emphasis on 'some,' because he found the
vast number of private lunatic asylums to be
such, that he should be glad indeed if some
arrangement or other could be made, so that
no such thing as a private asylum was
permitted in this country."

We have endeavoured to show, that without
imputing to a single person engaged in the
care of lunatics throughout the country any
but the most disinterested benevolence and
patient energy—assuming that there is not to
be found one instance of culpable mismanagement
—yet still the provision that exists in
England for the care and cure of the insane
is lamentably insufficient. We need not add
to the account any allowance for incompetence,
neglect, and other evils which must come to
be added in a large number of instances. The
existing system being in itself so obviously
inadequate, we have courage to hope that
before many years are over, we may live to
see "an enlightened and humane system of
treating the Insane adopted throughout the
country."

THE WONDERS OF MINCING LANE.

THERE are few persons who have not in
the course of their lives swallowed certain
nauseous doses of bark, colocynth, aloes,
or castor-oil; who have not indulged in the
luxury of otto of rose, or musk; who have not
had some dealings with the colourman, or the
dyer; and yet I feel tolerably certain that
not one-hundredth portion of those same
readers know anything of where such articles
come from, how they arrive here, and through
what channel they are finally distributed. It
will not occur to them that those costly drugs,
and dyes, and perfumes arrive in this country
from all parts of the world in huge packages;
that, in fact, ship-loads of them come at a
time; that the bales and cases which contain
them fill enormous piles of warehouses in
three or four of our docks; that several
hundred merchants and brokers obtain a
handsome living, many realising fortunes, by
their sale; and that some millions sterling are
embarked in the trade.

These things form a little-known world of
their own. They thrive mostly in Mincing
Lane, London. Even the omniscient Times
knows nothing about them. The Thunderer is
powerless within the drug circle. Search its
acres of advertisements, but it will be in vain;
nothing is to be found there of the dye and drug-
sales which are to be held on Thursday next
at Garraway's. These mysteries are only to be
learnt at the "Jerusalem," in Mincing Lane,
London, at the "Baltic," or from the columns
of the Public Ledger, a daily periodical
devoted to all such matters, and known only
to the initiated. In its columns you will
find a motley list of all the vile materials
of the Pharmacopœia; and in such quantities
as to justify a belief in the existence of some
enormous conspiracy to poison all living
creatures.

Mincing Lane is like no other lane, and
Mincing Lane men are like no other men.
Any Thursday morning, between the hours
of ten and eleven, and at every alternate
doorway, may be observed catalogues of
various drugs and dyes that are to be on sale
at noon, gibbetted against the door-posts.
Mincing Lane men will be seen rushing
madly along the pavement, as if a fire had just
broken out, and they were in quest of the
engines, jamming innocent lookers-on against
gateways, and waggon-wheels, and lamp-
posts.

It was into one of these obscure passages
that I turned with a companion, groping our