i88 5 .] 
Madmen and Madness at Rome, 
589 
desire for the riches necessary for the gratification of new 
wants ; the thirst for pleasure which has taken possession of 
the whole of society, directing its aspirations, stimulating its 
appetites, and causing it to subordinate everything to 
immediate materia! enjoyment. Now this positivism this 
naturalism of life this over-excitement of all the instincts 
this superheated existence, can but lead to madness and 
. I + t , wi11 of cours ® remembered that suicide is increasing 
in the modern world no less decidedly than insanity. But 
leaving this fact on one side we may turn to the words 
this positivism, this naturalism of life.” Here surelv 
are two words not well applied. Modern life seems’ to us to 
have at any rate a most decided tendency to unnaturalism 
if such a word may be used. But this also is not our pre- 
sent subject. F 
To these general causes must be added others more or 
less peculiar to Rome, and here we follow verbally Dr 
riordispini : — J 
“ i he Roman people passed suddenly in 1870, and without 
any gradual stagesof transition, from the practice of confession 
to liberty of conscience; from the exposition of the Gospel 
and from Lent sermons to free conferences and public 
meetings; from religious marriages to civil unions; from 
clandestine prostitution to public, authorised prostitution ; 
from a theatre subject to censorship to a theatre without 
rule or restraint ; from family life to public life ; from the 
aristocratic distinction of classes to their medley and confu- 
sion ; from instruction directed by the Church to an instruc- 
tion recognising no orders; from the exclusion of public 
affairs to the election of representatives ; from a Pope-kin°- 
to a constitutional government ; and we shall easily com^ 
prehend how violent must have been the shock to the popula- 
tion and what disturbances must have been introduced both 
in the physical and the moral order.” 
It is of course not our province to decide which of these 
changes is for the better and which for the worse. But we 
cannot deny the extent and the abruptness of the alteration. 
Rome does not in this respect represent an isolated fact." 
It is well known in France that the times of revolution are 
those which yield the heaviest contingent to the mad-houses. 
Buenos Ayres has furnished a sad instance of the same fact 
during the dictatorship of the notorious Rosas, and the 
recent events during the supremacy of the Commune at 
Paris are far from admitting of a contrary interpretation. 
From the tables given at the conclusion of Dr, Fiordispini’s 
