compile from the works, memoirs, and transactions of the different philosophical societies in Europe, from magazines, and the rich store of medical and psychological publications, furnished by the English, French, and German press, all the essays and cases that relate to the human faculties under unusual circumstances, (for pathology is the crucible of physiology), excluding such only as are not intelligible without the symbols or terminology of science. These I would arrange under the different senses and powers: as the eye, the ear, the touch, &c.; the imitative power, voluntary and automatic; the imagination, or shaping and modifying power; the fancy or the aggregative and associative power; the understanding, or the regulative, substantiating, and realizing power; the speculative reason, vis theoretica et scientifica, or the power, by which we produce, or aim to produce, unity, necessity, and a universality in all our knowledge by means of principles, *a priori; the will or practical reason; the faculty of choice,

* This phrase, a priori, is, in common, most grossly misunderstood, and an absurdity burthened on it which it does not deserve. By knowledge a priori, we do not mean that we can know any thing previously to experience, which would be a contradiction in terms; but having once known it by occasion of experience (that is, something acting upon us from without) we then know, that it must have pre-existed, or the experience itself would have been impossible. By experience only I know, that I have eyes; but then my reason convinces me, that I must have had eyes in order to the experience.

(Willkühr), and (distinct both from the moral will, and the choice), the sensation of volition which I have found reason to include under the head of single and double touch. Thence I propose to make a new arrangement of madness, whether as defect, or as excess, of any of these senses or faculties; and thus by appropriate cases to shew the difference between ;1. a man having lost his reason but not his senses or understanding-that is, when he sees things as other men see them,-adapts means to ends as other men would adapt them, and not seldom, with more sagacity,—but his final end is altogether irrational: 2. his having lost his wits, that is, his understanding or judicial power; but not his reason or the use of his senses, (such was Don Quixote; and, therefore, we love and reverence him, while we despise Hudibras): 3. his being out of his senses, as in the case of a hypochondriac, to whom his limbs appear to be of glass, although all his conduct is both rational, or moral, and prudent: 4. Or the case may be a combination of all three, though I doubt the existence of such a case, or of any two of them: 5. And lastly, may be merely such an excess of sensation, as overpowers and suspends all, which is frenzy or raving madness.

it

A diseased state of an organ of sense, or of the inner organs connected with it, will perpetually tamper with the understanding, and unless there be an energetic and watchful counter

action of the judgment (of which I have known more than one instance, in which the comparing and reflecting judgment has obstinately, though painfully, rejected the full testimony of the senses,) will finally overpower it. But when the organ is obliterated, or totally suspended, then the mind applies some other organ to a double use. Passing through Temple Sowerby, in Westmorland, some ten years back, I was shewn a man perfectly blind; and blind from his infancy. Fowell was his name. This man's chief amusement was fishing on the wild and uneven banks of the River Eden, and up the different streams and tarns among the mountains. He had an intimate friend, likewise stone blind, a dexterous card player, who knows every gate and stile far and near throughout the country. These two often coursed together, and the people here, as every where, fond of the marvellous, affirm that they were the best beaters up of game in the whole country. The every way amiable and estimable John Gough of Kendal is not only an excellent mathematician, but an infallible botanist and zoologist. He has frequently at the first feel corrected the mistakes of the most experienced sportsman with regard to the birds or vermin which they had killed, when it chanced to be a variety or rare species so completely resembling the common one, that it required great steadiness of observation to "detect the difference, even after it had been

pointed out. As to plants and flowers, the rapidity of his touch appears fully equal to that of sight; and the accuracy greater. Good heavens! it needs only to look at him! Why his face sees all over! It is all one eye! I almost envied him; for the purity and excellence of his own nature, never broken in upon by those evil looks, (or features, which are looks become fixtures), with which low cunning, habitual cupidity, presumptuous sciolism, and heart-hardening vanity, coarsen the human face, it is the mere stamp, the undisturbed ectypon of his own soul! Add to this that he is a Quaker, with all the blest negatives, without any of the silly and factious positives, of that sect, which, with all its bogs and hollows, is still the prime sun-shine spot of Christendom in the eye of the true philosopher. When I was in Germany in the year 1798, I read at Hanover, and met with two respectable persons, one a clergyman, the other a physician, who confirmed to me, the account of the upperstall master at Hanover, written by himself, and countersigned by all his medical attendants. As far as I recollect, he had fallen from his horse on his head, and in consequence of the blow lost both his sight and hearing for nearly three years, and continued for the greater part of this period in a state of nervous fever. His understanding, however, remained unimpaired and unaffected, and his entire consciousness, as to outward impressions, being

confined to the sense of touch, he at length became capable of reading any book (if printed, as most German books are, on coarse paper) with his fingers, in much the same manner in which the piano-forte is played, and latterly with an almost incredible rapidity. Likewise by placing his hand with the fingers all extended, at a small distance from the lips of any person that spoke slowly and distinctly to him, he learned to recognize each letter by its different effects on his nerves, and thus spelt the words as they were uttered. It was particularly noticed both by himself from his sensations, and by his medical attendants from observation, that the letter R, if pronounced full and strong, and recurring once or more in the same word, produced a small spasm, or twitch in his hand and fingers. At the end of three years he recovered both his health and senses, and with the necessity soon lost the power, which he had thus acquired.

SIR GEORGE ETHEREGE, ETC.

OFTEN and often had I read Gay's Beggar's Opera, and always delighted with its poignant wit and original satire, and if not without noticing its immorality, yet without any offence from it. Some years ago, I for the first time saw it represented in one of the London the