sion of happiness^ he lives on agreeable chimeras; but gradually uncle* 

 ceived byjthe hard lessons of experience, afflicted, in the depth of his 

 heart, witfi his own wretchedness and the wrongs of his fellow-creatures, 

 his bodily vigour wastes and decays, with it his moral nature changes, 

 and he may be referred to as the most striking proof of the reciprocal in- 

 fluence of the moral on the physical, and the physical on the moral part 

 of our being*. His history is a proof, beyond reply, that the melancholic 

 temperament is less a peculiar constitution of the body than a real dis- 

 ease, of which the degrees may infinitely vary, from a mere originality 

 of character, to the most decided munia. 



Gilbert arrived at Paris, with the germs of talents fitted for that great 

 theatre. Poor and rebuffed by those on whom he had built his hopes, he 

 mixed in the ranks of their detractors, and soon signalized himself, 

 among the most formidable, by a vigour worthy of a better cause. Per- 

 secuted, without respite, by want ; the mortifying sight of the happiness 

 which his enemies enjoyed, and to which he believed himself called, led 

 him on to a state of perfect madness. He believed himself persecuted by 

 the philosophers, who wanted to rob him of his papers : to save them 

 from the imagined rapacity, he locked his manuscripts in a press, and 

 swallowed the key. It stuck at the entrance of the larynx, stopped 

 the passage of the air, and suffocated the patient, who died, at the Hotel- 

 Dieu, after three days of the most cruel sufferingsf. 



Zimmerman, early exhausted by study, already a physician of celebrity, 

 at an early age, lived in solitude, with an ardent imagination joined to 

 the highest susceptibility? abandoned to himself, devoured with the thirst 

 of glory, he gave himself up to labour in excess, published his treatise on 



* I have no doubt that the influence of the physical organization on the intellectual 

 faculties is so decided, that we may regard .as possible the solution of the following 

 problem, analogous to that with which Condillae concludes his work on the origin of 

 human knowledge. 



The physical man being given, to determine the character and extent of his capacity, and 

 to assign, consequently: not only the talents he possesses, but those he is capable of acquiring, 



The profound meditation of the work of Galen (guodanimi mores corporis temper amenta 

 seqnantur ,) the perusal of Plutarch's Lives of Illustrious Men, and of the other biogra- 

 phers and historians of ancient and modern times; of the Eulogies of Fontenelie, Tho- 

 mas, d'Alembert, Condorcet, Vicq-d'Axyr, Sec. and the study of the medico-philosophi- 

 cal works of Haller, Cullen, Cabanis, Pinel, Halle, who have modified and enriched the 

 ancient doctrine of temperaments, will be of great avail in the search of this solution. 

 " Philosophy," cries an eloquent writer, in the noble enthusiasm which seizes him at 

 the sight of the riches accumulated by Fontana, in the Anatomical Museum in Florence, 

 ** Philosophy has been in the wrong, not to descend more deeply into physical man ; 

 there it is that the moral man lies concealed; the outward man is only the shell of the 

 man within. (Dupaty, 33cl Letter on Italy Author's Note. 



j- His life would have been preserved, if the cause of his illness had been understood, 

 which he indicated himself by repeating frequently " the key chokes me." His state of 

 madness made this pass for the words of a madman; but on opening the body, they key 

 Mras found, of which the ward was fixed at the entrance of the larynx : it would have 

 been easy, to draw it out, by putting a finger down the throat. 



This unfortunate young man expressed, a few days before his death, the melancholy 

 state of his soul, in stanzas most touchingly mournful : this is one, full of interest and 

 simplicity : 



Au banquet de la vie infortune convive, 



J'apparus un jour, et je meurs : 

 Je meurs et sur ma tombe oulenteinent j'arrivc 



Nul ne viendra verser cles pleurs. Jluitiv's Note. 



