in one of his manuscript volumes, under the title of Responsum Raphealis.

In the last place, an anxiety for the esteem, or a fear for the reprobation of mankind, is a natural vivid affection which always influences our actions, and which often gives a corresponding character to the subject of spectral impressions. Thus, among visionaries who boast of divine missions, we trace, in the subject of their illusions, a lurking ambition to maintain, by this means, a conspicuous rank among their fellow-mortals. ،، The Rev. John Mason, a clergyman of Water-stratford, near Buckingham," remarks Dr Crichton," was observed to speak rationally on every subject that had no relation to his wild notions of religion. He died in 1695, soon after he fancied he had seen our Saviour, fully convinced of the reality of the vision, and of his own divine mission. He was perfectly persuaded in his own mind that he was Elias, and that he was destined to announce the coming of Jesus, who was to begin the millennium at Water-stratford."

CHAPTER XII.

WHEN MORAL AGENTS WHICH EXERT A PLEASURABLE INFLUENCE ARE HEIGHTENED IN THEIR EFFECTS BY THE CO-OPERATION OF MORBIFIC EXCITEMENTS OF A SIMILAR PLEASURABLE QUALITY, THE MIND MAY BE RENDERED TOTALLY UNCONSCIOUS OF OPPOSITE OR PAINFUL FEELINGS.

"Sweetly oppress'd with beatific views,
I hear angelic instruments, I see
Primeval ardours, and essential forms."

THOMPSON'S Progress of Sickness.

I NOW trust that the view with which I set out is nearly established,-that the action of all morbific causes, capable of influencing the states of the mind, merely consists in an addition being made to the vividness of such qualities of our feelings, as had previously been rendered pleasurable or painful by the various objects which, from infancy, impress in a definite manner our several organs of sense. There is indeed no cause of mental excitement which, in this respect, exerts a more extensive influence over the mind than the nitrous oxide. This gas cannot absolutely change the quality of those mental states, which, from constitutional causes, are more or less painful, but its effect is to add an intensity of pleasure to feelings which are themselves grateful, and thereby to

diminish the vividness of painful sensations and ideas. Thus, we have traced its influence in rendering all painful feelings so faint as to cease being the object of consciousness.

The law by which mental consciousness is regulated, meets with an ample illustration in the effects imparted to our various feelings, by many of the morbific causes of mental vividness which I have enumerated. That peculiar cause inducing insanity, for instance, which is referable to a highly-excited state of the sanguine temperament, gives an additional degree of vividness to the pleasurable feelings of the mind; hence impressions of pain are so proportionally enfeebled, that the mental consciousness of them is not excited. This fact is exemplified in those individuals who, according to Burton, 66 are commonly ruddy of complexion and high-coloured, who are much inclined to laughter, witty, and merry, conceipted in discourse, pleasant, if they be not too farre gone;" who, if they should happen to take such a delight in dramatic scenes as the maniac recorded by Aristotle, are amused the whole day long with imaginary actors.

But it is instructive, in contemplating the cause of any pleasurable excitement, to confine our attention to its effect in diminishing the intensity of painful impressions made on sensitive organs. Sir Humphrey Davy has stated, that the nitrous oxide, in its extensive operation, is capable of destroying physical pain, and we know, that the cause of that variety of amentia which is distinguished by pleasurable fancies and reveries has a similar effect. Indeed, the insensibility

of the maniac, during the greatest height of a paroxysm, to actual impressions, has been long a subject of remark. "The skin," says one writer, "is sometimes as it were benumbed; the patients feel every thing like cotton; they do not feel punctures, blisters, or setons." About three or four centuries ago, when lunatics were unprotected by charitable asylums, this diminished or almost obliterated consciousness of sensations, was, unfortunately for these hapless beings, too frequently put to the test, and thus became a subject of popular observation and notoriety. The cruel deprivation to which they were liable resulted from the dissolution of the religious houses, which took place at the time of the Reformation. Maniacs, or Abraham-men, as they were then named, had no longer the benefit of those hospitals which, during the papal establishment, were instituted for their relief. Deserted also by their friends, who superstitiously attributed the cause of their disorder to the possession of devils, they were allowed to ramble about the country almost naked, and exposed to every hardship which could result from famine and the inclemencies of the weather. Thus despised and shunned, they were compelled, in order to procure the sustenance necessary to satisfy the cravings of their hunger, to use not only prayers, but force; and this practice at length suggested to idle and dissolute beggars the advantage to be derived from feigning madness, as a cloak for the compulsion which they might find it equally requisite to use in the collection of alms. But, in order to give a proper colouring to such a counterfeit, it was found necessary that the insensibility to

suffering which these poor Abraham-men evinced, should be also imitated.* Thus, in Decker's Bellman of London, we have the following account of one of these dissembling madmen :— ." He swears he hath been in bedlam, and will talk frantickly of purpose; you see pins stuck in sundry places of his naked flesh, especially in his arms, which pain he gladly puts himself to (being indeed no torment at all, his skin is either so dead with some foul disease, or so hardened with weather) only to make you believe he is out of his wits.” The disguise of one of these feigned bedlamites is assumed by Edgar in King Lear, who finds it no less necessary to imitate the maniac's corporeal insensibility:

"The country gives me proof and precedent
Of bedlam-beggars, who, with roaring voices,
Stick in their numb'd and mortified bare arms
Pins, wooden pricks, nails, sprigs of rosemary;
And with this horrible object, from low farms,

Poor pelting villages, sheep-cotes, and mills,

Some time with lunatic bans, some time with prayers,
Inforce their charity."+

* From this imitation arises the cant-term to sham Abraham, in use among the sailors.

It is scarcely in connexion with this subject to remark, that the horn which wandering madmen formerly carried about with them has excited much of the attention of antiquaries. Mr Douce, in his Illustrations of Shakspeare, observes, that Edgar, in order to be dressed properly, should, in the words of Randle Holme, "have a long staff and a cow or ox horn by his side, and be madly decked and dressed all over with ribbons, feathers, cuttings of