1828.] Vps and T)owns of London. 491 



dropt out of it : and who,, had they been in any place where the inha- 

 bitants were so few that they, all unfortunate as they were, could have 

 made a known and countable portion of society, would have acted in a 

 very different manner. 



The fate of those unfortunate persons and, from the acute feelings 

 which they evince, they are far from being the least valuable part of 

 society claims an attention that has never been bestowed, and which it 

 would be very difficult to bestow upon it. The steps of mental agony, 

 through which they must pass ere they come to that desperate resolu- 

 tion, which, alone, and without any one to say that there is heroism in it, 

 declares that '" death is better than life," would form a most singular 

 chapter in the history of human nature. To get at the history of them, 

 however, is the difficulty. They are in a region which the wing of the 

 imagination cannot reach ; they partake of the awful obscurity of that 

 land to which the sufferer escapes with the secret of them in his bosom, 

 and whence he can neither return nor send a messenger. When an act 

 of this kind is done at the moment that it is resolved on, in a paroxysm 

 of passion, there may be less of mental anguish in it than in many 

 states out of which the mind can recover. But, in very many of those 

 cases that are brought before the public after it is impossible to derive 

 from them any information by which one would be enabled to diminish 

 their number there is a calmness of mind a gradual progress and 

 repining which shew that the alternative has been one of thought, and 

 deliberation, and choice ; confessed an evil, but a lighter evil than that 

 which was avoided. From this, one is able to see that there is a philo- 

 sophy in the progress of that of which the end is madness ; and that, 

 without any immediate impulse of the more violent passions, there may 

 be a still, silent, and secret bitterness of life, compared with which, death 

 shall, to the calm contemplation of the party, seem a blessing. 



Any one who chooses to look at the accounts bungling, unskilfully, 

 and unphilosophically as they are drawn up of coroners' inquests, 

 will find that of those suicides which do not appear to have been preceded 

 by derangement, or caused by the momentary impulse of ungovernable 

 passion, the number is a much greater fraction of the whole in London 

 than in smaller societies ; and this goes far to prove that they are pro- 

 duced by that unseen and grinding w r oe, which overtakes those who are 

 dropt out of their places in the London crowd, and which has nothing in 

 it to rouse the passions to that extent at which they become, as it were, 

 an opiate to the pain of self-destruction. 



It is perhaps well that we are not able to look into this dismal 

 working of human nature ; and yet, could it be seen and told, the tale 

 might have some influence in restraining folly, and teaching caution. 

 We heed it not, however ; but hurry on from occupation to occupation, 

 and from pleasure to pleasure ; and when the news of the catastrophe 

 comes, we merely read it in a gossiping way, as part of the history of 

 yesterday, and forget it ere the morning. If we thought of it a little, 

 we might not be the worse the case may be our own. 



Imagine a human being it may be of the warmest heart, and the 

 most fine and kindly feelings who has lived, as thousands in London 

 live, in society, but not of it ; who has regularly met his men of busi- 

 ness or profession, professionallyrhi? acquaintance at his places of enter- 

 tainment ; who has found the day occupied, life flowing sweetly, and 

 had no need, and therefore no desire, to form any connexion upon which 



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