58 ON THE EFFECTS OF CERTAIN MENTAL 



mind of no great power, over which none of the passions appear 

 to have exercised any marked or predominant sway. 



The Imagination of Ophelia was of a far more intellectual kind.* 

 The whole soul of the gentle Ophelia appears to have heen absorbed 

 in her passion for Hamlet, which was unable to bear up against the 

 double misfortune of his declaration of " I lov'd you not," and the 

 counterfeit insanity, to her real, which was assumed for the further- 

 ance of his designs. Her dejection consequent upon this shews us, 

 at once, the bent and tenor of her affections. 



" Oh ! what a noble mind is here o'erthrown ! 

 The courtier's, soldier's, scholar's eye, tongue, sword ; 

 The expectancy and rose of the fair state, 

 The glass of fashion, and the mould of form. 



• «•**« 



I am of ladies most deject and wretched, 

 That suck'd the honey of his music vows." 



The professions of affection on the part of Hamlet had been fol- 

 lowed by contumely and insult, and her mind could no longer retain 

 its sanity when she witnessed the murder of her father by the very 

 hand that was presented for her acceptance. Although the insanity 

 on the part of Ophelia does not take place till after the murder of 

 Polonius, and appears to have been more immediately caused by 

 that event — still we find her wandering Imagination weaving all 

 her misfortunes into one thread, and twining it round the predomi- 

 nating passion of her love for Hamlet — 



" He's dead and gone, lady, he's dead and gone, 



At his head a grass green turf, and at his heels a stone ;" 



* That form of insanity under which Ophelia laboured has been termed 

 monomania, i. e., the hallucination is confined to one idea, or a small number 

 of ideas. This species of disordered intellect is in direct proportion as regards 

 the frequency of its occurrence, with the development of the intellectual 

 faculties, and the progress of civilization ; in which the play of these facul- 

 ties becomes so much modified by the nature of the objects which surround 

 them, and upon which they are exercised. No person can fancy a North 

 American savage a monomaniac from sentimental love, or a New Zealander 

 rendered insane from disappointed ambition, or the success of an opposite 

 party in politics. This disorder is essentially dependent upon the passions, 

 which themselves are the result of the moral relations which connect man- 

 kind, and by which they are bound in one grand community. It is the child 

 of the affections, the creature of sentiment ; and he who wishes to become 

 acquainted with its phenomena must make the heart of man his study, and 

 gain an intimate acquaintance with those infinite varieties of human feeling 

 which lie too deep for the eye of the vulgar and common-place observer to 

 analyze. 



