AND BODILY STATES UPON THE IMAGINATION. 61 



u I'm Madge of the country, I'm Madge of the town, 

 I'm Madge of the lad I am blithest to own ; 

 The lady of Beaver in diamonds may shine, 

 But has not a heart half so happy as mine. 



'* I'm queen of the wake, and I'm lady of May, 

 And I lead the blithe ring round the May-pole to day ; 

 The wild-fire that dances so fair and so free, 

 Was never so bright or so bonnie as me." 



Bred at a distance from the court, and in an obscure village, the 

 Imagination of Madge wonderfully adapts itself to the circumstan- 

 ces of her previous life. Had she been accustomed to society of a 

 higher order, she would probably have fancied herself a royal 

 queen, but the fancy having no materials of this kind to work upon, 

 she exalts herself to that dignity which, in rural sport, is generally 

 awarded to the most beautiful. The tenor of all this maniac's his- 

 tory strictly accords with the illustration I have given of it ; but 

 her death-bed scene is one of the most feeling that the pen of the 

 narrator or historian ever sketched. In the most violent and per- 

 fect maniacs, alarming disease very commonly partially or completely 

 restores the mental faculties ; the body acts by way of revulsion 

 upon the mind, and the disorder appears to be removed from one by 

 the action of disease in another. Most commonly this return of 

 consciousness is rather an unsteady twinkling than a fixed and bril- 

 liant light. The mind seizes ideas which it fancies are not new ; 

 looks upon objects in a truer light. The causes of its observation 

 become apparent ; and however gay the paroxysms of the disorder 

 may have been, there is frequently a tinge of profound melancholy 

 attends these periods of mental health, especially where the occasion 

 of its overthrow has been crime, or great misfortune. When these 

 periods immediately precede dissolution, as they frequently do, there 

 is always an instructive "persuasion" of its approach. The maniac 

 is aware that his troubles are past, that his toils are at an end, that 

 his grief and his gaiety, the troubles of his spirit, and the wander- 

 ings of his Imagination, will all sleep the sleep that knows no wak- 

 ing.* All the wanderings of Madge's partially restored mind 



* " It is rare," says Foville, " that the insane die in a state of mental aliena- 

 tion ; they generally fall victims to some bodily disorder, and the mind reco- 

 vers, in some measure, its sanity before dissolution. Even where the most 

 complete fatuity has been produced by long continued mental derangement, 

 an unsteady glimmering of reason occasionally returns. The intellect ap- 

 pears to approach once more the throne of reason, to linger about the scenes 

 in which she once delighted, and to recal for once more, and but for a mo- 

 ment, ideas which she once possessed, and which she is about to part with for 

 ever." How true is our author's character to nature ! 



