sion, it is clear that the acts which ensue | verged into general insanity, still marked with are the result of a certain infirmity of the this predominant character. He eventually died will, unless it be supposed that they are raving-mad. committed in total ignorance or forgetful-ious, sanguine temperament, of simple and reg"Dr. Michu knew a country-woman of a bilness, not only of the laws of duty and con- ular habits, but reserved and sullen in her manscience, but of the positive laws of this and ners. She had been ten days confined with her all other countries. But even in cases of first child, when suddenly, having fixed her eyes sanguinary monomania, several of which upon it, she was seized with a desire of strangare collected in the volumes before us, ling it. The idea made her shudder; she carried the infant to the cradle, and went out, in ornothing is more common or more affecting der to get rid of so horrid a thought. The cries than the efforts of the enfeebled will to re- of the baby, who required nourishment, recalled sist the suggestions of the distempered mind. her to the house, when she experienced a still "Dr. Zimmerman relates the case of a pea- more ardent impulse to destroy it. She hastensant born at Krumback, in Swabia, who was ofed away again, haunted by the idea of committen attacked with an irresistible inclination to ting so horrible a crime. She raised her eyes to commit murder. He felt the approach of the fit heaven, went to church, and offered up a fervent many hours, and sometimes a whole day, before prayer for divine assistance. The whole day its invasion, and, from the commencement of was passed by this unhappy mother in a conthis presentiment, he begged to be secured and stant struggle between the desire of taking away chained, that he might not commit some dread- the life of her infant, and the dread of yielding ful crime. When the fit comes on,' he says, to the impulse. She concealed her agitation un'I feel under the necessity to kill, even were it a til evening, when her confessor, a respectable child.' His parent, whom he tenderly loved, he old man, was the first to receive her confidence. declared would be the first victim of this mur- He soothed her feelings and recommended her derous propensity. My mother,' he cried to take medical advice. When we arrived at out, with a frightful voice, save yourself, her house,' adds Dr. Michu, she appeared or I must kill you.' Before the fit he complains gloomy and depressed, and ashamed of her sitof being exceedingly sleepy; without being uation. Being reminded of the tenderness due able to sleep, he feels depressed, and experien- by a mother to her child, she replied, 'I know ces slight twitchings in the limbs. During the how much a mother ought to love her child; but fit he preserves his consciousness, and knows if I do not love mine it does not depend upon perfectly well, that in committing a murder, he me.' She soon after recovered, the infant havwould be guilty of an atrocious crime. When ing, in the mean time, been removed from her he is disabled from doing injury, he makes the sight.' most frightful contortions and grimaces, singing or talking in rhyme. The fits last from one to two days. When they are over, he cries out, "Now unbind me. Alas! I have suffered cruelly, but I rejoice that I have killed nobody." 6 "The narrative is published of a lady, who, on returning home one afternoon, found her favorite female servant in tears. On questioning her, she flung herself upon her knees, and begged her mistress with earnestness to dismiss her from her service, in order to prevent the commission of a horrid deed. On being pressed to explain what she meant, she said that for some weeks back, every night as she undressed her mistress's child, the whiteness of its skin inspired her with an almost overwhelming impulse to deprive it of life. She suffered unutterable torture in resisting the tendency, and every day she found her resolution growing weaker. Andral relates the case of a man of considerable scientific reputation, who became the subject of these horrid impulses. He was seized with an intense desire to deprive some human being of life. Frightened by a consciousness of his state, he voluntarily deprived himself of liberty. He pray ed incessantly before the altar, that God would assist him in his struggle. When he felt the inclination arising (for it assumed an intermittent character) he had his thumbs tied together, and this slight physical obstacle for a time prevented him from gratifying the horrid propensity. Notwithstanding all his exertions, his malady increased, and he at length made an attempt at homicide; after which the monomania "Gall states, that he knew a woman who experienced, especially at certain periods, inexpressible torture, and the fearful temptation to destroy herself, and to kill her husband and children, who were exceedingly dear to her. She shuddered with terror as she described the struggle that took place within her, between her sense of duty and religion, and the impulse that urged her to this atrocious act. For a long time she dared not bathe her youngest child, because an internal voice said to her constantly, 'Drop him in; let him_slip.' Frequently she had hardly the strength and time to throw away a knife, which she was tempted to plunge in her own and in her children's breasts. Whenever she entered the chamber of her children or husband, and found them asleep, she was instantly possessed of the desire of killing them. Sometimes she precipitately shut behind her the door of their chamber, and threw away the key, to remove the possibility of returning to them during the night, if she should fail to resist the infernal temptation." The commission of any given act is determined by motives, whether sound or unsound, passionate or rational, real or imaginary, which influence the will; but it is impossible to affirm that in any particular case one motive premominates exclusively over all others. On the contrary, in almost every imaginable human action there is a conflict of motives; and the supreme will, pre the energy which has been finely termed to it. In order to give an air of reason "the great inmate" of man, is not a passive and coherency to these two propositions, instrument, but an active power. It does they are united by a third proposition to not imply insanity if the better motive is the effect that A being possessed by an inset aside by the worst, or if the stronger sane delusion, had no moral control over sense of duty is impaired by the solicita- his actions, and therefore was no fit object tions of crime. The conflict, whatever be of punishment." its result, is the proof of sanity. But if no such struggle takes place, if the conscience sane impulse to commit acts of violence and "In the instance of instinctive insanity or inis altogether dark and duty-dumb, if the atrocity, to play the incendiary, or to violate the unfortunate man goes about his work of good order and decency of social life, it is obviblood with as much confidence in his own ous that the only thing requiring much considrectitude of purpose as if he were engaging eration is the real existence of the disease, and in a deed of mercy-if he neglects all its distinction from ordinary and real criminalicautions, discards all apprehensions, and ty. So soon as it is proved to exist, there can glories in the murder he has committed, deplorable misfortune ought to be effectunlly sepbe no doubt that the person who is visited by this then, indeed, it may be affirmed that the erated from society, to prevent mischief to himcontrolling power itself is gone, and that he self and others. Whether he ought in any case has ceased to be a moral agent. The guilt to undergo other punishment than this is a quesof Adam and Eve was shown by their hid- tion which I do not feel disposed to discuss. As ing themselves in the garden; for from we have seen that a struggle often has taken the moment they had committed their of place between the desire to commit any violent act, and the conscientious feelings of the unforfence, they knew what was good and what tunate person who is thus tempted, it is probawas evil. The same test of discernment ble that some have yielded to temptation, though was admitted not long ago on the continent convinced that they ought to have resisted it. upon the trial of a very young offender, Such persons must be admitted to be morally who hid himself after he had perpetrated guilty and to deserve to suffer."-Prichard, p. some heinous action. But the real question of moral responsibility consists, not in the presence or absence of certain motives, but in the presence or absence of the power of controlling them. Those even who, with Lord Erskine in his defence of Hadfield, are inclined to give the largest extension to the influence which mental delusions exert upon the will, are compelled to reason upon the question as if some necessary connexion existed between the delusion and the act. The madman of Athens, who thought that all the ships which entered the Piræus were his own, was perfectly capable of reasoning and acting like other men. Nor would a judge have acquitted as an irresponsible lunatic that pleasant visionary described by Horace, who was ever smiling at a fancy stage or excited by the terrors of imaginary tragedy. Even such extravagances as these are not altogether incompatible with the rule quoted by d'Aguesseau in his admirable remarks on the subject, that it is a sufficient test of sanity "Mediocritatem officiorum tueri, et vitæ cultum communem et usitatum." This brings us to the more practical part of the whole discussion-that, namely, which concerns the impunity of persons of unsound mind. Nobody would venture to contend in terms, that because A was possessed by an insane delusion, therefore A was not punishable for having yielded 177. Criminal acts, whether in the insane or the sane, may proceed either from error of judgment or of the will; nor is a consciousness that an act ought not to be committed an infalliable test of moral guilt. The murderer of Cardinal Beaton-the assassins of Cæsar-or the republican fanatics who attempted the lives of Napoleon and Louis Philippe, would acknowledge no moral consciousness which ought to have restrained them. Though sane, their judg ment of right and wrong was altogether confused, because they failed to bring it to the test of the law. But for one crime which is dictated by an error of the judgment, a thousand are committed from depravity of the will. Yet here again the law interposes a salutary moral influence. If a man possessed with an insane delusion, or (to take a more common case of the same import) animated by some violent passion for any given act or object, is at the same time so infirm in will that he is likely to yield to temptation, what is to check him? What does check a large portion of mankind from committing acts of a criminal nature? The answer is obvious-it is the fear of punishment. Punishment supplies a motive sufficiently strong to counteract a vast variety of motives which would otherwise make incessant inroads in society; and the sanction of punishment cannot be omitted or re moved even in relation to the most obvious | The will is itself the guardian of the will. moral duties in the most civilized and ra- In very many cases of mental disease, we tional communities in the world. If, then, have no doubt that the necessity of adherthe idea of punishment and penal con- ing to a stricter discipline, aided by the sequences is indispensably necessary to fear of penal consequences, might check check the aberrations of the will, even in the progress of the complaint. A mind is those of sound mind, can it be admitted seldom overthrown until it is relaxed. that impunity is to be secured to the aberrations of those who have least the power of self-control-the insane? The great progress which has been made of late years in the treatment of insanity arises mainly from judicious endeavors to rouse the voluntary powers of the patient. passive victims of insurmountable disorders. They are now treated, in spite of the delusions which haunt them, as men, still preserving some share at least of the responsibilities of men. Inclined as we are to uphold the necessity of punishing even the insane for such criminal acts as may have been committed by them, unless their state was such as to exclude all consciousness of the nature of what they were doing, we confess that it is neither probable nor desirable that capital punishment should be applied in such cases. But we see no reason whatever for not subjecting men like Oxford or M'Naughten to the hardships, labors, and privations of a penal colony, and the infamy of a felon's banishment, though perhaps a more satisfactory mode of treatment would be a strict system of prison discipline in this country. The fact is perfectly well known to all those who have paid attention to the treat-In former times the mad were regarded as ment of the insane, that those unfortunate persons are quite as accessible to the fear of punishment as any other men. No lunatic asylum could be conducted, no lunatic could be restored to health, without salutary rules of discipline based on some kind of penal sanction. We do not, of course, mean those harsh corporal punishments which were the inhuman expedients of a less enlightened age, but certain privations or restraints, or even the application of heavy douches of cold water, have been employed as punishments in some of the French mad-houses with great effect. In France, too, we have seen sanguinary monomaniacs who were perpetually handcuffed, as a mark of criminal degradation. The fear of punishment acts with sufficient intensity on the insane, except of course idiots or maniacs, who are incapable of any fears, and not susceptible of any moral influence at all. The acquittal of certain criminals, on more than one recent occasion, on the ground of insanity, has unquestionably encouraged other persons to attempt similar crimes under the shelter of the same plea. Each verdict has been followed by a recrudescence of such of fences. This striking fact is in itself a sufficient proof, that however such delinquents may be affected in their minds, they are sufficiently sane to reason, and to act upon the state of the law and the decisions of juries, by which they conceive it to be demonstrated that they are exempt from the operation of the law. How, then, can it be maintained that the same persons would have been incapable of reasoning upon the effect of the law, if it had been applied in all its rigor, or of conforming to its injunctions, if they had no hope of eluding its penalties? The assurance of impunity not only acts upon insane minds as a direct incentive to crime, since they know themselves to be legally relieved from the consequences of their actions, but it acts upon minds in a state of incipient unsoundness as an encouragement of the disease by which they are affected. We have already observed, that the discipline of those establishments which are devoted to the reception and cure of the insane could not be maintained if the principle of irresponsibility was rigorously adhered to. Punishments adapted to the condition of the unhappy inmates of those asylums are habitually and very properly employed in them. Favors or privations, an increase of liberty or of restraint, praise or humiliation, are found to be scarcely less effectual means of encouragement or repression amongst the insane than amongst any other class of human beings. But it needs no demonstration to show that such rewards and punishments must be circumscribed within certain limits; and those limits are determined by the state of the patient. It is clear that where insanity exists, the common feeling of humanity and justice, of which the law is and ought to be the expression and the instrument, will recoil from the application of that fearful mode of punishment which leaves no room for mitigation or change. No one will contend that dangerous madmen deserve no more clemency at the hands of the offi cers of justice than any of the lower animals in a state of mischievous fury; but neither is it strictly correct to assert, that as dogs which have worried sheep are not beaten or hung as an example to dogs, so neither can madmen be punished as an example to madmen. Nothing can be more opposed to all experience in the treatment of mental diseases, than the supposition that they are impervious to the force of example, or the fear of consequences, except indeed in the most advanced stages of furious mania. The great evil and danger which would appear to result from the present state of the law, as it was applied at the late trial, consist in the extension to cases where the absence of moral control is by no means fully established, of all the precautions and immunities which the humanity of our criminal jurisprudence has invented or allowed. That absence of control was not established, as we have already seen, but assumed as the certain and inevitable consequence of that amount of mental delusion under which a man like M'Naughten apparently labored. To borrow the motto of our northern cotemporary, "Judex damnatur, cum nocens absolvitur.' In this case, the eminent judge who decided the cause and stopped the trial before it had reached its natural termination, stands fortunately above all animadversion. Nor can we refrain from paying our humble tribute of respect to that exalted and unbending dignity of our principal ministers of justice which raises them in such questions above the reach of the censures and influences of the day. But the obvious fact that "nocens absolvitur," the felon is acquitted,-provokes some sort of inquiry into the state of the law which has led to such a result. Nothing is more embarrassing than to suggest even an experimental remedy in a case of difficulty arising out of the most mysterious and complicated symptoms which can distract the mind of man, and one which is so closely connected with the deepest springs of human infirmity. The subject is tangled and abstruse, but in the course of the administration of justice in this country, it is brought before a tribunal which has less of legal acuteness and severity than of human sympathy. Hence arises the discrepancy we have already pointed out between the verdict of a jury on a question of insanity, in a civil and in a criminal case. In the former, it seems charitable to the subject of the inquiry to defend his liberty of action, and to give him credit for sanity, until absolute demonstration of his malady is produced. In the latter, the compassion of the jury, enlisted with equal or greater intensity on behalf of the prisoner, accepts and adopts the plea of insanity on very slender grounds. In either case a jury is called upon to examine facts of the most perplexing kind, and to weigh evidence frequently of the loosest character which can be tendered in a court of justice; the singular, diversity of the result at which a jury so placed will arrive, in the one case or in the other, is a sufficient proof of the absence of fixed rules or principles to guide its decision. By the old law of France, great care was taken that the plea of insanity should be tried as a distinct question from the main question of the guilt of the prisoner, and always before other Judges. By the penal code of modern France it is laid down as a general principle, that where there is insanity (démence) there is no crime or delinquency; consequently, whenever insanity can be successfully pleaded, the imputed criminality of the prisoner falls at once to the ground. To a certain extent this may be said to be the case in England; at least the more celebrated cases of insane criminality are of such a nature that the whole defence and acquittal of the culprit turned upon the unsoundness of his mind. The criminal act itself was patent and overt; and the more openly it was committed, the greater reason is there to believe that such an act was insanely committed. Perhaps there would be some advantage in separating the two questions which are thus simultaneously brought before the jury, instead of allowing the main interest of the trial to turn at once upon the circumstances and evidence indicative of insanity. This might be effected by allowing insanity to be pleaded at a later period of the proceedings, as in arrest of judgment; and the inquiry arising upon this plea might then be conducted without so direct and especial a reference to the crime set forth in the indictment, and it might be brought before a special jury better qualified to enter into an investigation of so peculiar a character. With regard to the test of insanity, or to speak more accurately, the test of moral responsibility, it does not appear to us that the mere proof of the presence or absence of the faculty of distinguishing right from wrong, is the safest that can be adopted. The number of persons of insane mind who are utterly unconscious of what is right and what is wrong, is comparatively small, yet they are not fit objects of punishment, at least not of capital punishment, TROJAN, THE SERVIAN KING. TRANSLATED BY JOHN OXENFORD. [Servian legends are not, I believe, commonly known. The following, which is a very curious one, is taken from the introduction to a col I. when their impulses are so extravagant, and their power of self-control so enfeebled that they are the victims of merciless and absurd delusions which they obey though they be lieve them not. On the other hand, where every circumstance in his life tends to war-lection of Polish traditions, by M. Woycicki. rant the inference that a man does habitually The poetical prose in which it is written, and exercise the control of free volition over all the dash of puerility, seem to me very effective. -J. O.] his ordinary actions, we should be most unwilling to exempt him from punishment on "QUICKLY give me my horse! quickly bring the ground of a mere mental delusion, be- it hither! The sun has long vanished. The cause the fear of punishment is quite as like-moon and stars are already shining, and the dew ly to restrain such a man from a crime as the already glistens on the meadows. The south delusion, under which he labors, is calculat-wind blows no more, and if it does, 'tis no more ed to impel him to commit it. In a word, the only test which a court of criminal justice can safely allow itself to adopt, and the only inquiry upon which it ought to enter, is, whether the criminal had sufficient intelligence to know that the act he has committed, is punishable by law, and sufficient control over his actions not to be the mere victim of blind impulse or frenzy. THE ISLAND OF THE EARTHQUAKE. AN island lay upon the placid sea, Calm, in its glowing beauty, as the dream Of a fair child, who sees in ecstasy Some heavenly vision on its slumbers beam; gems, And golden fruits, and regions ever warm And many the soft silent morn did bless, Were hopeless, wretched, homeless, fatherless! Came from the heaving bosom of the earth; heating, but cooling. So quickly to horse! Every moment's delay is time lost. With beating heart has the black-eyed virgin already long awaited me. With the speed of the hurricane or of the eagle do I fly on my swift-footed steed, because the night is so short and the day is so long, and I can only live at night-time." Thus spake Trojan, king of the valiant Servians, who could not endure the rays of the sun. Never had he seen the light of beaming day. For if a single ray had shone on the head of Trojan, he would have passed away as a cloud, and his corpse would have been dew. The obedient squire brings the horse from the stable. Trojan flings himself on it, and will away. His faithful servant follows him. "So fresh and cool! 'Tis the right time for me!" cries Trojan, joyfully. "The stars, indeed, are shining, and so is the moon; yet their pale beams are without warmth. The pearly dew, like white coral, covers the green meadow, and in every drop can I see the form of the stars What a stillness preand the face of the moon. vails! Nothing disturbs my mind, scarcely when the hoarse voice of the owl sounds from the dark wood." "Oh! my sovereign," replied the squire, "I prefer the sun and the hot day, even though its beams do glow and give warinth, to the gloomy shades of night. Then am I quite blind, and the most lovely colors become black-the violet, the rose, and the scented elder-blossom. And at night every thing slumbers-the birds, the beasts, and man. Only to the wanderer does a solitary light beam from the village by the roadside; only the faithful guardian of the house awakens the echo with his barking, when he sees a wolf or something strange. As the billows of the sea, as the waving corn-field when prayer-incline itself on all sides. No bird interrupts the stirred by the wind, so does the echo move and Now cradled in its grave; reproachfully M. E. M. G. Roman Antiquities.-Beneath an ancient cairn, on the hill of Knockie in Glentanner, has been found a very interesting treasure of bronze vessels, celts, spear-heads, bracelets, armlets, rings, and other relics of remote antiquity. silence of night, for the minstrel of the springthe lark, flies merrily over the green meadow, when awakened by the beams of morning, and greets the shining day with the sun. At night she sleeps, like every other creature, to refresh her strength. But we, O king, pursue our way in the shades of night." III. A fair mansion was shining in the distancea light glistened in every window. There did the beloved of Trojan await his embrace. Tro |