BITS OF BIOGRAPHY. 247 



whatever might be his present state, it was satisfactorily shown that 

 he had been a lunatic; and he was accordingly sentenced, not to 

 death, but to be disposed of as His Majesty should think fit. 



I found the old man in Bethlehem : he had wept himself blind. 

 The keeper, who wore a clean smock frock, observed that he did no- 

 thing but cry; that he was washing himself away I use the man's own 

 words that, not having handkerchiefs sufficient to sop up his tears, 

 he had taken to the skirts of his coat, and they were consequently as 

 dripping all day as though he had been in a funny, and heedlessly 

 allowed them to hang over the gunwale ! I'm sorry for it, but I 

 can't deny that I laughed heartily, recklessly, desperately, at the fel- 

 low's exaggeration. 



My cachinnations, and they were quite involuntary I could not 

 have smothered them had I been in a mourning coach unfortu- 

 nately awoke a wretched maniac in a cell below. I did not look 

 through the bars, to which many of the madmen flocked to see the 

 tiger in his cage ; but I fancied him, stretched upon straw, stark- 

 naked, and horribly writhing under a metal fetter upon every one of 

 his muscles. His voice was that of a fallen archangel. There was a 

 mysterious, an appalling mightiness in it. Every sound that he 

 uttered was dreadfully pictorial. Physically, I merely heard him ; 

 but, mentally, I saw Sampson struggling ! He must have been super- 

 human. He was an Italian; yet he uttered nothing like the Tuscan. 

 He had a language of his own : it bore no affinity to any among 

 those which are spoken by the sane ; still it was intelligible the 

 heart understood it. His theme was evidently sublime wrath, and 

 colossal agony. His groans were Satanic : his despair was equal to 

 that of the dethroned Saturn. An imaginative man may fancy what 

 would be the bitter bellowings of an African lion bound down by the 

 grisly honours of his mane to those sands which he was accustomed 

 to spurn ; but they would be gentle as the cooings of a dove com- 

 pared with the ocean roar of this maniac. It was awful; it was 

 sublime; it seemed to have had no origin; to be without end: it 

 was, to the soul, eternal. It gave the bodily ear an idea of one of the 

 million tremendous choristers, who, excited by intensity of anguish, 

 make the vault of a Presbyterian hell vibrate with their horrible glees. 

 Would that I had never heard it! 



The greater part of those who surrounded me seemed so calm and 

 rational, that I ventured to ask the keeper if he thought they were 

 all really mad ? " No more mad, sir," he replied, " than you or I ; 

 their infernal passions and propensities make them appear so. When 

 a man commits a common crime he is regularly hung, but if his 

 offence be perpetrated under circumstances of original atrocity, he is 

 inferred to be insane, and consequently saved. Nine- tenths of the 

 fellows here are mere monsters of iniquity : there are indeed a few 

 poor wretches who labour under delusions which it is impossible to 

 eradicate I'll shew you a specimen." 



I followed him to a cage which contained a common-looking man 

 in a frieze coat, grey breeches, and mottled worsted stockings. 

 " There," said he, " is a mad murderer: he came here because he 

 killed a pedlar. He would take as much delight in destroying you as a 



