with him. "Girls will be girls," and a | unsalable goods, but as something which moderate participation in the innocent one party was eager to have and the pleasures of society at home and abroad other reluctant to lose. Undoubtedly is what no kind and sensible parent will this was in a great measure from her deny them merely on the score of being known power of doing work, which had too elderly and fond of ease himself to re- a value equivalent to money; whereas quire or quite to like it. It is an undenia- the parents now get rid of an expense, ble fact, however-and let those take con- and the husband too often incurs a needsolation from it who most feel they need lessly heavy one. It is greatly to the it-that the young ladies who go out most detriment of the social affections that an are not those who always secure the best expensive outfit seems more and more in husbands, or even any husbands at all; request, so that the aim sometimes defeats nay, that the girls who are most admired its own end, and terminates in having no and popular are not those who are either outfit at all. This evil needs to be atthe handsomest or the most expensively tacked at the very root by parents; with dressed. Unlimited credit at the milli- them it rests to bring up their children ner's and jeweler's, the most untiring of with reasonable expectations, and to adapt chaperons, will not carry the grand point. their habits to their means. A boy or girl So certain is this, that many mamas and who is placed at a school where the table daughters, when they see that some un- is better than at home, is, of course, dispretending little body, of whom it has contented with the domestic providings. been frequently affirmed that "there is A small shopkeeper's daughter, who nothing in her," wins a prize in the matri- should learn to play the harp, except for monial lottery that beauty, style, position, the purpose of instruction, would, of fashion, fortune, failed to secure, they are course, repine at her lot in a home where obliged, for want of a better solution, re- a harp could not be played. Who would luctantly to observe that "marriages are fit up an expensive steam apparatus with made in heaven." Generally, a better no specific object? Yet it is equal folly solution might be found in the sweetness, to provide the young with accomplishunassuming manners, and intrinsic worth ments unsuitable to their position in life, of the party, who, perhaps, has been seen which they will be hardly able to practice. more than once in the soft, sober light of A sense of their acquirements being home, where shaded lamps cast a mild thrown away is painful to many young radiance so much more becoming than people, and destroys social happiness. the ball-room chandeliers. But, say that On the other hand, there is hardly any marriages are made in heaven, that pre- accomplishment which, if the proper end destination inevitably brings the parties is kept in view, may not subserve and intogether who are to run in couples; well, crease domestic happiness. In the young then, a truce with any more anxiety, ladies of the present time is continually maneuvering, and competition. The race found an extraordinary craving for change is not to the swift, nor the apple to the of scene; one is dying to go to Italy, anfair. Pursue, O ye daughters! the even other to go to Egypt, another to Tastenor of your ways; knowing that the mania. Before steamboats and railroads happy time will come, if it is to come; made time and space so insignificant, these and if it is not, that no amount of going cases would simply have been counted out and flitting restlessly from one water- madness, or downright folly; but now ing-place to another will alter the case. parents harass themselves to gratify the wish for what is not impossible, but only excessively expensive and inconvenient. Could not these restless young ladies turn their energies to better account? If they are tired of crochet and Berlin work, are there no hungry to feed, no naked to clothe, no children to teach, no sick to be visited? A utilitarian, seeing a rapid stream racing to the ocean, exclaims: "What a fine water power is here wasted!" Eternity is the ocean: shall not these rapid streams be turned to While the bachelors in Italy have been so much on the increase, the desire of parents to marry their daughters has been by no means lessened. Thus, the striving, the desiring, comes from the wrong side, which is any thing but dignified. Among uncivilized tribes, and in early states of society, the wife has often been purchased, or, at all events, a very handsome compensation has been offered parents for parting with their daughters. She has not been treated like a bale of account?-these fast young ladies kept [ a few days most delightfully; a guardian moving to some purpose? Without angel to the poor; a valuable auxiliary to copying Miss Marsh, Mrs. Bayly, and the clergyman and clergyman's wife; in Mrs. Wightman, they might find some corresponding sphere of usefulness. England, with all thy faults, I love thee still; and the women, young and old, rich and poor, of England can not, after all, be matched. What household servants they make! what devoted, pure-minded governesses! what wives! what mothers! what sisters! The single lady of a certain age is a personage scarcely at all seen, at any rate in her proper position, except in England. In Roman Catholic countries she takes refuge in a convent; she is hardly considered respectable; whereas here she is respectability itself! The old maid of old novels and plays, indeed, prim, censorious, and spiteful, is disappearing. In her place we have a most cheerful, contented, benevolent, and popular lady, seldom behind the fashion or behind the news and literature of the day-beloved by nephews and nieces, married brothers, sisters, and cousins; a tower of strength in times of sickness and family troubles; a favorite visitor, yet not always visiting nor yet staying too long; sometimes, on the contrary, having a sung little home of her own, where pet nieces and nephews spend high esteem and respect among the tradespeople; a famous letter-writer, and the fabricator of most beautiful fancy work! Of this genus we are privileged to know several specimens, some of whom, we are bold to hope, will bridle when they read this little account, and say with a pleased, half-doubtful look: "Well, I'm sure; this can't be me!" Yes, it is you, aunt Kate and aunt Maria, and ever so many aunts with pretty names who have been pretty young women in your time, and who now have something than beauty dearer. You are the salt of the country; as long as you are the objects and subjects of such warm and kindly feeling, you greatly contribute to the support of the social affections. We meant to say something about the baneful custom across the Atlantic of living in boarding-houses for the first few years of married life, so sadly detrimental to the social affections. But we will not prick holes in our neighbors' coats. The evil won't spread. The Englishman's home is his castle; for that home he fights, works, and prays. He won't go into a boarding-house, trust him for that! A. M. From the Edinburgh Review. MARVELS OF BRAIN DIFFICULTIES." * THERE is one, and but one, organ of the human body the symptoms of disorganization and the disturbed functions of which we read of with avidity and ponder over with wonder. The disorders which affect the material instrument of the mind result in consequences so momentous, follow paths so extraordinary, and present enigmas so countless, that the general *On Obscure Diseases of the Brain and Disorders of the Mind, their incipient Symptoms, Pathology, Diagnosis, Treatment, and Prophylaxis. By FORBES WINSLOW, M.D., D.C.L., Oxon. London: 1860. reader may be excused for the curiosity with which he follows the physician in his details of morbid psychological curiosities, and hangs over the surgeon's scalpel as it searches out the pathological appearances from which they are presumed to spring. The volume under notice is not by any means a mere collection of such facts; it claims the higher and more original duty of tracing out the various paths of departure from healthy conditions of brain, and of unmasking hidden phases of insanity. Here lies a whole realm of unbeaten ground, the value of which Doctor Wins- | disorders of the brain which do not bring low has been the first to draw public attention to, with a gravity the occasion requires. It is the opinion of many eminent physicians that the present century has witnessed a very large increase of brain disorders, and that this increase has taken place in an accelerated ratio as the strain upon the commercial and public life of the people has become greater. The intense competition which at present exists among all the liberal professions, the excitement accompanying the large monetary transactions which distinguish the trading of the present day, the gambling nature of many of its operations, and the extreme tension to which all classes of the community are subjected in the unceasing strug gle for position and even life, has resulted in a cerebral excitement under which the finely-organized brain but too often gives way. Doctor Brigham, of Boston in the United States, gives a most deplorable account of the increase of cerebral disorders in his own country, in which he asserts that in sanity and other brain diseases are three times as prevalent as in England. This statement would seem to confirm the notion that go-a-headism-if we may be allowed the term-is straining the mental fabric to its breaking point. And we must remember that the mischief must not be gauged merely by the number of those who fall by the wayside; there must be an enormous amount of latent mental exhaustion going on, which medicine takes no count of. It is a matter of general observation that the children of men of intellectual eminence often possess feeble, if not diseased brains, for the simple reason that the parents have unduly exercised that organ. What applies to individuals, in a certain modified degree applies to the race. A generation that overtasks its brains is but too likely to be succeeded by a second still more enfeebled in its mental organization, and this exhaustive process must go on increasing if the social causes producing it continue in operation. We have some means of measuring the magnitude of the evil where absolute lunacy is concerned, inasmuch as we possess official returns to deal with, which gauge its rate of increase or decrease with pretty tolerable accuracy; but we have no such means of ascertaining the nature of the increase of those no less grave the patient under the cognizance of the law. If we could take count of the number of able men who, at the very height of their efficiency and in the very plenitude of their power, are struck with insidious cerebral disease, such as softening of the brain, and drop out of life as gradually and as noiselessly as the leaf slowly tinges, withers, and then flutters to the ground; if medicine had any system of statistics which could present us with a measure of the amount of paralysis that comes under its observation, or of the apoplectic seizures which so suddenly blot out life-we should doubtless be astonished at the very large increase which has of late years taken place in affections of the brain. It is just possible that the tendency lately observable in the community to take a little more breath in the race of life, to prolong the annual holiday, and to favor the habit of physical exercise, of which the volunteer movement is a noble example, will do something to check the degenerating process at present undoubtedly going on: meanwhile we must see what we can do to remedy the existing evil. It is, we believe, within the province of art to arrest in its earlier stages many disorders of the brain if notice were only given in time; but the golden opportunity is allowed to slip, and disordered function slowly but surely merges into disordered organization. We know full well that at least eighty per cent of cases of insanity are curable if treated early; and we also know that of those received into the great county asylums scarcely ten per cent ever recover. The difference between the two drop through into the condition of driveling idiots or of raving maniacs, simply because the curative influence of medicine has been sought too late. In some of the more obscure and fatal brain diseases, such as cerebral softening, general paralysis, epilepsy, etc., the neglect of early treatment is equally deplorable. The insidious approaches of mischief are often foreshadowed by symptoms so trivial that they pass unobserved by relatives and friends. The person so affected will frequently drop his stick or umbrella in his walk; he will in the slightest possible manner drag one leg, a finger will feel numb, or there will be some slight disorder of the sight. "In the incipient stages (says Doctor Wins low) of cerebral softenings, as well as in organic them again as perfect as before; at other disintegrations of the delicate nerve vesicle, ob- times it obliterates group after group of served in what is termed progressive, general, associated ideas in succession, according to and cerebral paralysis, the patient often ex- the order in which the brain has acquired hibits a debility of memory, long before the disease of the brain is suspected, in regard to them. Again, a single letter in a word is the most ordinary and most trifling matters con- all that the destroying power lays its hands nected with the everyday occurrences of life; he upon among the immense magazine at its forgets his appointments, is oblivious of names mercy. The chapter on the Diseases of of his particular friends, mislays his books, loses Memory in DoctorWinslow's compendious his papers, and is unable to maintain in his and very interesting volume, is full of mental grip for many consecutive minutes the cases illustrative of the eccentricities prename of the month or the day of the week. He sits down to write a letter on some matter of sented to us by impaired and morbid business, and his attention being for a second memory: among the most remarkable of diverted from what he is engaged in, he imme- which is a case related by Doctor Graves diately loses all recollection of his correspond- | of Dublin. A farmer in the county of ence, and leaves the letter unfinished. In Wicklow, in consequence of a paralytic fit, this condition of mind he will be heard con- suffered the following extraordinary imstantly inquiring for articles that he had care-pairment of memory. He could readily fully put aside but a few minutes previously." call to mind all parts of speech except noun substantives and proper names. This defect was accompanied by the following singular peculiarity: he perfectly recollected the initial letter of every substantive or proper name for which he had occasion in conversation, though he could not recall to his memory the word itself. Experience had taught him the utility of having written in manuscript the things he was in the habit of calling for, or speaking about, including the proper names of his children, servants, and acquaintances; all these he arranged alphabetically in a little pocket dictionary which he used as follows-if he wished to ask for any thing about a cow, before he commenced the sentence he turned to the letter C and looked at the word cow, and kept his finger and eye fixed upon the word until he had finished the sentence. He could pronounce the word cow in its proper place so long as he had his eye fixed upon the written letters; but the The memory may be considered one of the most delicate tests of the presence of injury, or the progress of natural decay, in the brain. From the hidden storehouse of impressions which we know to be seated in the cerebrum or greater brain whilst in a state of vigorous health, by the act of recollection we possess the marvelous power of reproducing the countless tableaux of scenes that have occurred during a long and busy life. Some persons never forget a face they have once seen; others will acquire with extreme rapidity a dozen languages, containing hundreds of thousands of words, and store them for immediate use; the musician catches the floating notes of song, and they remain for a lifetime deeply graven on his memory. The artist packs away within his brain the image of the faintest flush of sunset or the thousand shades of sky, and reproduces them years after on his easel. It may be imagined that a tablet so sensitive to re-moment he shut the book it passed out of ceive and so strong to retain an incredible number of images in a state of health is not unlikely to speedily make a "sign" of its impaired condition. A flaw in an Egyptian slab covered with hieroglyphics is pretty sure to obliterate some of them, and experience proves that brain injury is speedily shadowed forth by defects more or less grave of the memory. In the whole range of psychological inquiry there is nothing more remarkable perhaps than the "vagaries," if we may be allowed the term, played by the deteriorating agent in the storehouse of memory: sometimes it enters and for years annihilates the vast collection in an instant, only to restore his memory, although he recollected its initial and could refer to it when necessary. Sometimes cerebral mischief is indicated. by the mere transposition of letters. A gentleman on recovering from an attack of paralysis, for example, always said puc instead of cup, and gum instead of mug. It is very common for a person in ordinary speaking to use the wrong initial letter to a word; but the mind takes cognizance of the error as quick as thought and instantly reproduces the right letter, but in the wrong place: thus, in attempting to say a fat pig, if the tongue were to trip and say instead of fat, pat, the next word would inevitably be fig. The control of seven; the healthy brain over minutiae of this nature, and the automatic manner in which it is exercised, are thus clearly exemplified; but in disease such slips escape notice altogether. The records of psychological medicine are full of instances of defects of memory equally trivial, consequent upon lesion of the cerebrum. Thus, an old soldier, after suffering a loss of brainmatter from an operation, was found to have forgotten the numbers five and and a schoolmaster, consequent upon a brain-fever, lost all knowledge of the letter F. Whilst disease sometimes touches the memory in this delicate manner, in its more active phases it seizes the organ with a rude and stifling grasp, and removes at once whole masses of carefully acquired knowledge. An Italian gentleman, master of three languages, struck with the yellow fever, exhibited in the course of it remarkable phenomena. At the beginning of his attack he spoke English, the language he had acquired last, in the middle of it French, and on the day before his death his native tongue. The total abolition of an acquired language is not at all an uncommon thing in brain disease, and as a rule the memory in such cases inay be said to recede to those ideas engraven upon the memory in childhood. Those persons who have talked a foreign language all their lives will be found to pray before death in their native tongue. There have been some remarkable exceptions to this rule, however, and Doctor Johnson when dying is said to have forgotten the Lord's Prayer in English, but to have attempted its repetition in Latin. Possibly the explanation of this exception may be found in the fact that he thought habitually in Latin. There are not wanting instances, however, to prove that the memory under disease oscillates between the past and the present. For instance, Doctor Winslow records a case in which a gentleman after a serious attack of illness lost all recollection of recent events: his memory presented the tablet engraven with the images and ideas of his youth only; as he gained strength, however, the old and forgotten ones were revived. A still more remarkable instance of loss of memory and its sudden resuscitation we quote from Doctor Winslow's volume: "Reverend J. E., a clergyman of rare talent and energy, of sound education, while riding through his mountainous parish was thrown violently from his carriage, and received a violent concussion of the brain. For several days he remained utterly unconscious; and at length, when restored, his intellect was observed to be in a state like that of a naturally intelligent child, or like that of Casper Hauser after his long sequestration. He now in middle life commenced his English and classical studies under tutors, and was progressing very satisfactorily; when, after several months' successive study, the rich storehouses of his memory were gradually unlocked, so that in a few weeks his mind wealth and polish of culture. resumed all its wonted vigor, and its former The first evidence of the restoration of this gentleman's memory was experienced while attempting the mastery of an abstruse author, an intellectual effort well adapted to test the penetrability of that vail that so long had excluded from the mind the light and riches of its former hard-earned possessions." It would seem as though ideas were registered on the brain in successive layers, the last lying uppermost; and that as the nervous energy retreated, either as a consequence of disease or of gradual decay, so those ideas lost life downwards. The condition of the circulation of the blood through the brain in all probability has much to do with these changes in the vividness of the memory, as it is a known fact that some people recollect better by holding the head downwards; and Sir Henry Holland tells us that, after enduring great fatigue in descending one of the deep mines of the Hartz Mountains, he entirely lost his memory, which returned speedily again after he had taken rest and food. It is observable again, that in morbidly active conditions of the cerebral circulation, such as occur in fever and on the approach of apoplexy, the memory is exalted in an extraordinary manner, and events are remembered with a vividness that is almost painful. In the rapid rush of the blood through the brain, that occurs in some excited stages of insanity, it has been remarked that patients have given signs of faculties which they had never evinced in a state of sanity; prosaic persons have suddenly become poetical, and those who normally had no head for figures, have in these conditions shown no ordinary aptitude for them. It would seem as though the blood, when at this high pressure, had penetrated portions of the brain hitherto but feebly supplied, and brought into cultivation cerebral wastes that were before barren. Doctor Winslow, in alluding to these exaltations of memory, |