294 Notes for the Month. [Sepr. 
immediate cause of his retirement is variously stated. The Globe says, 
in noticing the difficulties likely to follow the event— 
“One story which has been propagated—that the expense of his Royal 
Highness’s tours has been a subject of difference between him and the First 
Lord of the Treasury—may be true, but can scarcely be the real cause of his 
removal. The expense must have been in itself very trifling, and if it had 
been much greater, must have been repaid by the activity which a vigilant super- 
intendence produces. To suppose, however, that the difference between the 
Prime Minister and the High Admiral arose on a question of economy, though 
a trifling one, is to put it on the footing most favourable to the former. If 
the real cause of the resignation of the Duke of Clarence was the desire of 
the ministry to interfere with the patronage of the navy, the event will be 
deeply discreditable to them.” 
The true spirit of Whiggery peeps out in this paragraph. The expense 
of his royal highness’s fétes and tours, at the rate at which it was pro- 
ceeding, would have spent more in a fortnight than all Mr. Hume’s 
motions of economy could save ina month. And the Globe, and those 
who support it, if the expences had been paid, would have been the first 
to exclaim against the “ profligate extravagance” of ministers for allowing 
them. The true cause of this sudden and unwonted liberality on the 
part of the Globe, is that the Duke of Clarence is supposed to be in some 
way or other opposed to the Duke of Wellington, and that he was one 
of the stays set up to prop the tottering throne of Mr. Canning. 
We observed a little way back, in noticing Dr. Burrows’s “‘Commen- 
taries upon Insanity,” upon the disposition of that malady to communicate 
itself by sympathy. It is universally admitted, indeed, that a great pro- 
portion of individuals, if compelled to associate with persons in a state 
of derangement, would become mad in the course of a short time them- 
selves ; and there is as little doubt that many of the medical men, whose 
practice has been devoted nearly altogether to cases of lunacy, have 
gradually undergone a change in their habits and demeanour very nearly 
approaching, at times, to mental alienation. A singular instance of this 
fact presented itself only a few weeks since to a foreigner of some dis- 
tinction, who was desirous of seeing the interior of a lunatic asylum. 
He visited (by permission) an establishment of considerable eminence, 
and was a good deal interested by what was shewn to him, though some- 
thing uneasy at finding himself occasionally almost left alone by the 
officer who attended him, among a number of persons who walked about 
perfectly at liberty, but who were, nevertheless, as he was assured, in a 
state, many of them, of incurable insanity. One man was described to 
be religiously mad ;*a second as melancholy ; a third, who had been 
confined seven years, could not be convinced that he was not a hair- 
dresser : but all walked about the passages and avenues of the building, 
and conversed with the keeper, occasionally, apparently with reason 
and good sense. At length, as they were passing through one of the 
lower halls, a man of very singular aspect and manner came up and 
spoke to the attendant. He was a little man, very spare in figure, dressed 
in black clothes, and spoke with great rapidity and gesticulation ; he 
talked for some moments, laughing repeatedly, and, at parting, shook 
hands repeatedly with the superintendent.— What is the matter with 
that man, now ?” asked the visitor, who had been struck by the oddity 
of the person’s demeanour ; and concluded of course that he was a 
patient. “ Him?” was the reply—“ Why, that is our house-apothecary !” 
The veracity of hunters and anglers is proverbially held of a punic 
description. A huntsman who can tell how many hairs a fox has in 
