178 BIVI BOTANICI. 



trine of partial insanity, by the melancholy fate which extinguished 

 the fortunes of Marcus Cato,* of his daughter Porcia, and of her 

 husband Marcus Junius Brutus — all so illustrious for their high 

 mental endowments, their extensive learning, and their patriotic 

 virtues. These and every other ennobling distinction of character 

 were depraved, in those celebrated personages, by the effects of a 

 profound constitutional impregnation with the germs of that passion 

 which discloses itself in the manifestations of suicidal insanity. 



Among the victims to the pest of magnanimous pusillanimity, 

 and the intenseness of its impulses, not unhonoured is the name of 

 Juba, the Mauritanian prince, who perilled his own destiny and that 

 of his kingdom, by associating its resources with those of the Ro- 

 man republicans, in their resistance to the Cesarean faction and its 

 encroachments on the revered institutions of their country. When 

 the disastrous field of Thapsus* had overwhelmed their armies in 

 ruin and dismay, the vanquished monarch had his inherent malady 

 thrown into a state of exaltation which impelled him to snatch at 



* Cato of Utica and Brutus his son-in-law are wont to be represented as 

 superlative patriots, in whose deportment the highest moral, political and re- 

 ligious virtues appear with a practical pre-eminence. Subjected to the scan 

 of reason and of science however, these virtuous displays become the features 

 of a fondled affection, habitually deriving its sources from a misbalancement 

 of the mental economy. When pressed to extremity by the reverses of a 

 " fratricidal" warfare, these stern senators resolved deliberately, but with the 

 recklessness of insolent despair, to adopt the base resource of suicide as the 

 best expedient for anticipating the horrors of captivity and degradation. 

 Hence came the scenes of the three-fold tragedy : when, with the composure 

 of deranged reflection irretrievably bewildered by misconceptions of the Pla- 

 tonic philosophy, Cato killed himself; or, in gentler phrase, vita se abdicavit: 

 then, after being a murderer of his friend and benefactor, Brutus assisted his 

 own soul in disembodying itself, inconscious of guilt or impenitence : and 

 then, disdaining to survive the disasters of her husband and father, Porcia 

 put an end to her existence by swallowing a piece of burning coal. These 

 facts, though terrible, are instructive ; they illustrate the horrid vigour of 

 concentrated insanity ; they exemplify the monstrous obliquity of senti- 

 ment engendered imperceptibly by the hallucinations of pride. 



* Juba united his native forces with the republican army under Scipio, 

 and they were defeated by Ca?sar near Thapsus, an African town which this 

 battle rendered famous with posterity. Being deserted by his Mauritanian 

 subjects, Juba terminated his unfortunate career by a method in his mad- 

 ness, which evinced distinctly that its wild ascendancy had prostrated tor ever 

 the highest principles of his mind's immortal nature. Juba and his friend 

 Petreius, a Roman officer, agreed to execute their mutual destruction by 

 engaging in a single combat : in this, the king fell first ; and the survivor, by 

 his own commands, was slaughtered by a slave. 



