one who has been the means of launching a fellowbeing into eternity, the chances in favour of relapse will be increased, so that society must be in perpetual dread of the return of a malady which has already been attended with such direful consequences. On the ground then of this tendency to relapse, public anxiety and the prospective loss of possibly valuable life, we should first object to the murderer ever being freed from supervision.

Secondly. The effect of seeing at large and in the enjoyment of unrestricted liberty, after a certain period of duresse, an individual who had rendered himself notorious by the commission of a crime of startling magnitude, one which by its very greatness of iniquity would exercise a species of fascinating influence upon the imaginations of that, alas, too numerous class, always on the look-out for the marvellous and the wonderful, numbering amongst its votaries many an unquiet and restless spirit, thirsting as it were for fame, no matter howsoever obtained, ready to fall into any track which promises to gratify this morbid desire for distinction or notoriety; the effect, I repeat, would be to remove from society an important safeguard, a check which is capable of operating with many in various degrees of moral depravity, if not even of unsound mind: let it be distinctly understood that the penalty of murder, whether committed by the hand of the sane or lunatic assassin, be death or confinement for life; and legislation does all in its power to

shield society against the perpetration of the act; but to make a loophole, by allowing the escape of the criminal, after a few years' confinement, would greatly favour the increase of this stupendous crime.

Under these circumstances, and in emergencies of such moment, we are surely justified in requiring that those who have committed capital crime, under the influence of insanity, shall remain for life under responsible superintendence: beyond this, every care should be taken to render the remaining portion of their career as unembittered as possible; bearing in mind that they are not really criminals, but unfortunates; that they are expiating, not their fault, but their misfortune;-not for their own sake, but for that of society.

45

CHAPTER IV.

UNSOUND MIND AS A RESPONSIBLE CONDITION.

Ir may now be well to take cognisance of some conditions of mental unsoundness, in which the individual yet possesses such a measure of correcting and controlling power over his actions as to make us regard him in the light of a responsible and accountable being. The large class of eccentrics is that which first comes into notice, amongst which we observe individuals possessing high intelligence and sound judgment; and the knowledge of this fact has operated in causing many authorities to reject the idea of eccentricity being any evidence of mental unsoundness; we quote the following graphic sketch from the pen of an eminent writer as illustrative of this opinion:-"Lord Monboddo, insisting that the human family were originally adorned with tails, showed himself an eccentric theorist: had he asserted that they actually retained them, he would have had an insane delusion instead of a philosophic crotchet. Eccentricities no more constitute insanity than idiosyncrasies constitute disease; for

example, there was an old man well known in London during the last century, who was of an ungainly appearance, and subject to occasional attacks of hereditary melancholy: so inconsistent was he in his habits, that sometimes he practised great abstemiousness, and at other times devoured huge meals with brutish slovenliness and voracity; sometimes he would persist in drinking nothing stronger than water, but occasionally he drank wine by tumblers-full; his income was far from large, and not of a certain amount, yet he kept a set of old men and women about his house, whose bickerings and disagreements now and then drove him out of doors; he was in general very loquacious, but had been known to sit in company and drink a dozen cups of tea without speaking a syllable; when not engaged discoursing, it was his custom to keep muttering to himself; in walking he performed strange gesticulations with his limbs, and would not go in at a door unless he could effect his entry in a certain preconceived number of steps, and so as to introduce himself on a particular foot, turning back and recommencing, until he succeeded as he desired: there was a row of posts near his house, which he would not pass without touching singly, and if he found he had omitted one in the series, he retraced his steps to remedy the neglect: he hoarded up orange-skins for some mysterious purpose which he would never divulge; he suffered remorse of conscience for having taken milk with

his coffee on Good Friday; he believed in ghosts, and went ghost-hunting in Cock-lane; and he maintained that he had heard his mother calling upon him by name from the other world. Yet Dr. Johnson was so far from insane, that his judgment commanded respect and admiration everywhere, and by the common consent of eminent contemporaries he was the most vigorous thinker and the greatest sage of his time." Now, although we agree to a certain extent with the opinion that eccentricity is not insanity, at least in the general acceptation of the term, still, notwithstanding this, we may with propriety view it as an indication of mental unsoundness. Observation assures us that it is no uncommon thing to find weakness existing in the neighbourhood of great strength of mind.

"Great wit to madness is allied."

Men of genius full of thought and feeling, tasking to the utmost their power of nervous endurance, in the endeavour to gain the mastery over those obstacles which so plentifully impede their progress, are exactly those who are most subject to insanity; the direct operation of intense motives, such as stimulate master minds, leads to disorder of the brain, and this disorder of the brain reacts to maintain a perverted bias, or injurious habits of application; Cowper, Byron, Swift, are good examples. So that we should rather regard these eccentricities as the result of mental overtension, a frequent accompaniment to the susceptibilities of genius, and as