THE HERMIT OF RED-COAT'S GREEN. 307 



evidence to warrant an interference. Mr. Forster saw the hermit last 

 year, and found him singularly acute, without the least trace of men- 

 tal aberration. He said to that gentleman: " You may think it strange 

 my living like this. So do I sometimes, but it is not done without a 

 reason." Nor could Forster's friend, Dickens, recognize the signs of 

 madness in his behavior. 



On the other hand, there is the family history pointing to heredi- 

 tary predisposition to insanity, only wanting some exciting cause to 

 develop it ; also the change of character at ten, with an alleged phys- 

 ical cause ; the action, as a moral cause, of an injuriously indulgent 

 rearing ; the constant waywardness, obstinate willfulness, in a word, 

 wrongheadedness ; the acts which frequently alarmed his family ; the 

 necessity at length of legal restraint ; the freaks regarding dress ; his 

 extraordinary conduct on the death of his mother ; the persistent 

 delusion respecting the queen, involving much loss of property ; the 

 entire neglect of his dwelling and person ; his groundless suspicion of 

 and antipathy toward his brother ; the delusion that poison was put 

 into his food ; his fits of mental depression ; and his violent passion on 

 the slightest contradiction. These characteristics in many respects 

 so familiar to us in asylum-life, and so easily conceivable in others if 

 certain cases of insanity we have known had been allowed to develop 

 prove that the hermit's condition passed the limits of eccentricity, 

 that his emotions were perverted by disease. But, while his case was 

 primarily one of moral insanity a madness of action rather than lan- 

 guage, a state of degraded feeling rather than of intellectual incapa- 

 city his suspicions at times took the form of a definite delusion. It 

 should be carefully borne in mind that his isolated life, and neglect 

 of his residence and dress, did not arise from the preoccupation of his 

 thoughts by any absorbing pursuit. He had none. It arose from his 

 diseased mental condition, and the solution of the problem of his life 

 can be obtained only by tracing back his history to the unfavorable 

 circumstances of his childhood, acting upon a brain in all probability 

 predisposed to disease. 



Should such a man be interfered with ? Interference could not be 

 made on account of the neglect of his property, or of his mode of life. 

 But, conceding his insanity, would it have been desirable to place him 

 under care ? He was harmless to others, and also to himself, except 

 in a very general sense ; but might he not have been benefited and 

 really more comfortable under medical treatment and control ? And 

 answering, as I think this case did, the definition of the law, that 

 there must be "demonstrative proof of the incapacity of the indi- 

 vidual to be trusted with himself and his own concerns," it certainly 

 would have saved a great deal of trouble, had he been under the pro- 

 tection of the lord chancellor. I submit that such control would 

 have been better for the neighborhood, for his family, and for the 

 hermit himself. 



