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the inscriptions, and was so absorbed in his musings that he did not perceive a new made grave, which lay open before him; he fell into it, and on being assisted by his friend to rise, be turned to him and said: "my dear friend, I feel the sting of a speedy dissolution. I have been at war with the grave for some time. I find it is not so easy to vanquish as I imagined. We can find an asylum from every creditor but that." That melancholy walk with its accidental circumstance, probably recalled too vividly, those thoughts of a dreadful resource for the wretched on which he had often meditated. The idea took possession of his mind and a dose of poison terminated his brief life. He had only attained the age of seventeen years and nine months. He had not tasted food for three days, and it was with his last penny that he purchased the arsenic with which he poisoned himself. The record of the inquest which was held on his body, is one of the most affecting documents we have ever read. The evidence all went to prove a very excellent character, and a very sad fate; the persons with whom he lodged, bore testimony to the regularity of his payments, and of his care for his mother and sister, "sending presents to them while in the utmost want himself."-One loaf was all that he allowed himself in the week, the stalest that could be got, that it might last the longer. He asked for no assistance and even declined such as was offered. At one time his landlady pressed him to retain sixpence out of his week's rent, as she knew he was handing her all that he had, but he would not. One day, when he had taken no food, she would have had him dine with her and her husband; he thanked her, but declared he was not hungry. The apothecary said when he was examined, "I believe if he had not killed himself, he would soon have died of starvation, for he was too proud to ask of any one; witness considered deceased as an astonishing genius." It came out in evidence that "he was frequently for nights without going to bed; he wrote for the Magazines;" his publishers were inconsiderate, at the very time when his distress was so urgent, and drove him to such extremity, they owed him eleven pounds. It is no great stretch of charity, however, differing from the finding of the jury on the inquest, to attribute the fatal act to a diseased state of the brain, brought on by mental labour and bodily suffering. Wordsworth, Byron, Coleridge, Shelley, Keats, and Alfred de Vigny, have each paid a tribute of admiration to the genius of "the

marvellous boy". Chatterton, we are told, was in his childhood, pensive and melancholy. This cast of character is often observed in the early days of men of genius, but by judicious. management, its ill effects may be prevented; air, exercise and diversity of occupation, are unfavourable to the state of reverie. to which it inclines and by which it is encouraged.

It is a remarkable fact, that instances of insane naturalists are rarely if ever found; the endless variety which their pursuit affords keeps their mind and attention alive, and in the marvels which nature reveals, their thoughts are constantly directed to the Author of all. A friend, in speaking of her own dear son, told how much she had suffered during part of his childhood by the unaccountable melancholy under which he laboured; he would stand looking in her face, while the big tears rolled down his cheeks; "Mother, I'm sorry," he would repeat from time to time, in the most pathetic tone; when she would press him to say what ailed him, he would still reply "Mother, I'm sorry." Various pursuits, suited to his elegant tastes, a deep sense of religious duty, and feelings that sought in the sympathy of others for their greatest enjoyment, prepared him for coming years, and through his youth and manhood he was remarked for a delightful gaiety, and "the sweet content that goodness bosoms ever."

Though exercise is necessary for the preservation of mind and body in a healthy state, it may be carried too far; the body will sink, if it is exerted beyond its natural strength, and the mind if overstrained by intense study, particularly if it interfere with the hours of repose and relaxation, cannot bear up against the pressure. Dr. Winslow observes that "every effort of thought is accompanied by expenditure of living material; the supply of the material is through the blood, hence the blood is sent in greater quantity to the brain in thought; and when the increased demand is constant, an increase in the vascular capacity of the brain becomes necessary, and is provided by the adaptive reaction of the organism." The affecting case of William E. Tooke, who was a victim to exclusive study, is no solitary example of its fatal effects. This gifted youth, so distinguished at Trinity College, Cambridge, devoted himself from a very early age to the most abstruse enquiries into moral and political philosophy; to his intense application the melancholy catastrophe was attributed which deprived his country of one who would have ranked among her chief

ornaments. The verdict returned, was, that he had "destroyed himself in a fit of temporary insanity, brought on by inflammation of a membrane of the brain, supervening on a state of nervous exhaustion, consequent on excessive mental exertion in too ardent a pursuit of knowledge." Beattie's sufferings after the metaphysical studies in which he had been engaged while writing his Essay on Truth, were so great that he could not bear to look over the proof sheets, and had to employ & friend to undertake the task; when it was published, he declared that he dared not read it; "those studies," he said, "came to have dreadful effects upon my nervous system; I cannot read what I then wrote, without some degree of horror, because it realises to my mind the horrors that I have sometimes felt after passing a long evening in those severe studies." Tissot, in treating of "the health of men of letters," enumerates a vast and melancholy number of those who were intense sufferers from exclusive devotion to study; he mentions among them Kotzebue as having "attempted suicide in consequence of an overwrought brain;" it is well known that Lord Londonderry, who died by his own hand, in August, 1822, toiled generally for twelve or fourteen hours every day, at the most exhausting of all kinds of labour. The deep thought, and the cast of melancholy expressed in his fine countenance, indicated the state of his mind. We read in one of the late papers the result of an inquest on the body of a suicide; he "destroyed himself," was the verdict, "while labouring under temporary insanity, having been for some time in a low and desponding state of mind, brought on by over study." There are many cases, where those who spend themselves in an exclusive study, are liable to the same state of abstraction and reverie, to which poets or painters are so peculiarly subject; unable to dismiss the train of ideas which has occupied them in a fascinating pursuit, they are frequently as little observant of the passing scene, as if it were not in existence; this is the very state of mind most frequently beset by illusions and hallucinations; the state which is known as the student's hallucination.

We could cite examples of many a bright star, which set even while diffusing its light on a world, which it seemed designed to illumine. There was one-remembered well-whose memory will be for ever cherished in his native university with the pride and admiration due to rare endowments; his honoured

name has reached the most distant part of the world; he fell a victim to pressure on the brain, which led to the fatal catastrophe, brought on, it was said, by intense application to mathematical questions of complicated calculation. If ever consolation was afforded to the friends of one who died under such circumstances, it was in this deplorable case. The last work which had been seen in his hand, and it was on the very morning of his death, was a volume of Butler's Sermons; the manner in which he spoke of those admirable discourses to a friend, who came to him, as he closed the volume, evinced the sentiments which were uppermost in his mind. The elevation of that enlightened mind, was so well known to his friends, that they at once attributed the fatal act to a physical cause, a conclusion borne out on the inquiry.

Many of the nervous ailments now so prevalent among the young, may be traced to an over-strained system of early education; before it is sufficiently matured, the mind is overtasked with scientific lessons and profound subjects, which require a depth of thought and a closeness of attention quite unsuited to the mental and physical temperament of childhood. Medical men are quite aware of the danger of a great demand upon the young brain; parents who would make prodigies of their children, should be taught in a less melancholy way than by experience, that the functions of the brain should not be prematurely exercised on subjects which require a great stretch of the intellectual powers. Lord Dudley has been mentioned, as exemplifying the mischief done by this fatal error; his fine intellect was irreparably injured by the system pursued by his tutors, who, in admiration of the power of his mind, exercised it too severely; the child of promise was, after the lapse of some years, doomed to the most pitiable seclusion.

Nothing, perhaps, is so much calculated to impress us with a conviction of our fallen state, as the frequent observation that to the best affections, the highest endowments, and the noblest pursuits, the origin of the greatest calamity may be traced; it should indeed teach that these inestimable gifts should be humbly held, and subjected to the control without which the very blessings bestowed for our happiness may become a source of misery.

A History of the Irish Poor Law, in Connexion with the Condition of the People. By Sir George Nicholls, K.C.B., late Poor Law Commissioner, and Secretary to the Poor Law Board. London: John Murray, Albemarle-street, Knight and Co., 90 Fleet-street. 1856.

Of the ills and misfortunes of life it is trite to say, that while the larger and heavier inflict of course the severer suffering for the time, the lesser are usually found to be the more thoroughly harassing, owing to their more frequent recurrence, and not a little also to the undignified character of the annoyance.

The particular case of Ireland offers no exception to this general rule. Her graver visitations have their own terrible effect for the moment, and undoubtedly leave deep traces behind. But there are minor evils far oftener at work, which if less tragic in their effects, prove on the whole to be infinitely more teazing and irritating. And amongst these latter, there are none to our mind rifer with small but frequent vexations, and petty, yet often very insulting, annoyances, that those which go to make up the characteristics of the work now lying before us, and of its author as a public man and an official.

This application should indeed be extended to almost every English publication of whatever nature that has (or makes,) occasion for commenting upon Irish matters, and to the writers and compilers of those publications. Whatever else

they contain, however in other points and particulars they may vary from each other, in one point there is an unfailing similarity, namely, in the tendency to depreciatory, sarcastic, and oftentimes most calumnious expressions towards Ireland. No doubt, sad to say, that this state of things is encouraged and fostered by that yet more unworthy and deplorable tendency of too many Irishmen to run down their own country and countrymen; a disposition and practice totally without parallel in any other country; as neither the English, the French, the Germans, nor any other people save only certain classes amongst our own, are guilty of calumnious candor of the kind. They rather endeavor to cover over and conceal, or excuse where concealment is not practicable, whatever they may consider defective, or open to censure, at

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