custom he observes, although he should lie down in the deepest and dirtiest pool of the court-yard. He is wroth when inter- . rupted, and expressed the greatest horror and astonishment when requested to exhibit this self-invented ceremony. He would deny the accuracy of this appellation; as the only explanation which he will vouchsafe on the subject is, that he acts after the manner of the prophets, and that he is unhappy when he does not do so. He can repeat large portions of the Scriptures, generally containing the titles and terms of honour and dignity applied to the Supreme Being; but he seems to retain little or no conception of the principles which even these passages contain. Here likewise Veneration is evidently the presiding feeling. His visions are of two kinds,-peaceful and pastoral, or belligerent. He sees from the window of his cell multitudinous herds of cows issue from the clouds in the west, and follow each other with such velocity and in such myriads, that the whole earth is covered, the sky darkened, and the sea filled with their numbers. The procession sometimes consists of larks. The organ of Number, which is considerable in his head, may account for the nature of this apparition ; while the species of animals may have been suggested by his original occupations. Four or five times during each day and night he has to witness objects much less interesting to his pastoral imagination. He is molested by evil spirits of all grades, often by their chief, with whom he has to wage war; and most manfully is the struggle maintained. At these moments his eye opens, brightens, and becomes fixed; his brow is puckered and lurid; his lips are livid and protruded; he suddenly shrieks out the most hideous imprecations on his antagonist, tosses his arms, and kicks most unmercifully whatever object is nearest. The

tug

of war is sometimes fierce and protracted; but if approached in his wildest mood, and while howling forth his abusive epithets, he becomes instantly calm, raises his bonnet, and only looks back with a scowl on his tormentor, saying, “ It's a fine day,”-a salutation

" which he utters even when the snow is up to his chin. His most frightful conflicts occur during the night, when the cries he sends forth would imply that the result is unfavourable. He speaks of these encounters, and of his adversaries, with a degree of terror-struck awe and respect. At the onset his look is that of defiance and vengeance; at the close he expresses reluctance to allude to the matter, kneels down, and says that he is very much troubled. The demon is here conjured up by his Wonder and Cautiousness, which are both considerable ; the strife is the result of his large Destructiveness and Combativeness. The latter are besides often manifested in quarrels with his fellow patients, who are for the moment treated as equals, but who,

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whenever the storm of passion has subsided, immediately assume in his eyes the aspect of superiority.

Now here is the history of a St Anthony in the nineteenth century. Here is the same ceremonial piety, and similar satanic conflicts, attended with similar triumphs. The spiritual metempsychosis appears to have been more extensive in the primitive church. The transformations of the adversaries of him who may deservedly be called the Father of Superstition, were numberless ;* but although W. C.'s habits do not permit us to determine the aspect of his tormentors, that it is sufficiently hideous and loathsome may be gathered from his horror and desperation during the period of possession. In both characters there are clearly the common elements of perfect confidence in the nature of the services of worship performed, and perfect credence in the reality and presence of the phantoms which disease has conjured up. But, viewed through the medium of former opinions, or were the principles upon which these men have acted followed out to their legitimate application, what would be the conclusion of a philosopher ? Simply that they have experienced strong, and to them irresistible impulses to worship the Deity, and in obeying these have chosen the most humble and abject postures expressive of submission ;-that. in repeated acts of this kind they have the delight of religious consolation ;-that to other individuals of less intense feelings of adoration, such conduct appears exaggerated, because it is at variance with their own, and because they rest content with and receive consolation from different or less humiliating modes of worship ;-but that in these devotees it is the faithful manifestation and exact measure of their fraine of mind. Further, these men succumb to the suggestions of Wonder and Cautiousness highly excited, and believe supernatural agencies and appearances. If belief in, or apprehension of, the power of witchcraft, be a proof of madness, we

, must hold lunacy to have been epidemic in former times. Luther, Calvin, and even greater men, entertained this belief, and lived at liberty the admiration of mankind : it was, in truth, a bit of the orthodoxy of the day. Indeed the superstitious feelings of the former innovator—so bis foes, and some even of his friends, allege-went much further. Rejecting as unworthy of credit his successful tilt with the blue-bottle fly, that being the incarnation in which Satan attempted to disturb him during composition, we yet find passages in his works which may be and have been interpreted as affirming the “manifest apparition of the devil to dispute with him.”+

• See the plate of his Temptation.

+ For the controversy on this subject see vol. iv. p. 546. of Scott's Conti. nuation of Milner's Church History.

Be this as it may, there is still another class of pietists whom my patient even more closely resembles. I allude to the more outrageous of the Independent and Fifth-monarchy men who figured during the usurpation of Cromwell. The majority of these fanatics for some are chargeable with gross hypocrisy-appear to have despised all pleasure apart from the activity of their Veneration, Wonder, Combativeness, and Destructiveness. They engaged incessantly in demonstrations of these feelings: they knelt down in the highways and byways, in solitude and in society, armed with a Bible and a naked sword; intending by means of the one weapon to conciliate the wrath of God, and by means of the other to repel the attacks of Satan, with whom they asserted they were called upon to maintain a constant and personal struggle. The frightful “ wrestling," of which they so fre

" quently boasted, was unquestionably, in some cases, a term used to represent a mental conflict; but in others the expressions were too explicit, the general demeanour was too much that of a combatant, and the throes and contortions of the body were too violent, to leave any reasonable doubt that the strife in which they were engaged was by them believed to be real, and sustained, hand to hand, with a substantial antagonist.*

Under all circumstances, their lives were a compound of the word and body worship which they condemned in others, and of the dark and malicious ferocity of the demon to whom they supposed themselves to be opposed. Yet these men assisted in subverting one throne, and in erecting another of greater power and more tyrannical sway; and they are even now recognised by many as worthy of a place in the calendar of freedom and religion. Such a title I would be loath to dispute; but it seems fair to claim that my patient, possessing qualities so identical with theirs, should be enrolled beside them.

(To be continued.)

ARTICLE II.

LECTURES ON PHRENOLOGY : Delivered before the Young Men's

Association for Mutual Improvement of the City of Albany. By Amos DEAN. Albany, N. Y., 1834. 12mo. pp. 252.

The perusal of these lectures has gratified us not a little. Mr Dean has obviously studied the works of the European pbrenologists so attentively as to imbue his mind with their ideas and spirit; and, although no pretension is made to originality, the

• For a somewhat exaggerated account of the leaders of these enthusiasts, see the novel of Woodstock.

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style of his work indicates that he has thought for himself, and is far from being a servile copyist. It is eloquently and vigorously written, though sometimes rather too flowery for the British taste. But the Americans are fonder than we of florid composition.

Mr Dean offers some excellent remarks on the opposition which new doctrines generally meet with, and which he justly regards as positively conducive to the suppression of error and the progress of truth. “ It is the safeguard,” says he, “ against useless and inexpedient innovation. It protects the existing state of things, until a state obviously preferable is offered. It checks that constant tendency to change, which is sufficiently impressed upon all human phenomena. We are far from complaining that the infant science of Phrenology has been opposed. We rejoice that it has been so. We do not, here, even complain of the spirit with which that opposition has been conducted ; although we could have wished its manifestations to have been more humanized than they apparently have been. We even pass over the instruments of opposition, assertion and ridicule, after entering our protest against their use generally in the investigation and discovery of truth. What we do complain of is, unfairness of representation. The Phrenology, or rather Craniology, or Cranioscopy, of the Edinburgh Review, just about as much resembles the Phrenology of Gall and Spurzheim, as Paddy Blake's echo did the voice to be echoed. When asked, How do you do, Paddy Blake ?' it would echo back, Very well I thank you, sir! nents have kindly taken it upon themselves to raise up a Phrenology of their own, to clothe it with their own mantle, to invest it with their own properties, and then take to themselves most immeasurable merit for knocking down what could not stand alone." _P. 14, 15.

After narrating the rise and progress of Phrenology, Mr Dean proceeds to lay down and demonstrate its fundamental principles

. In adverting to the phenomena of genius, he introduces the following striking observations on the wonderful talents of the father of poetry. , “ Is genius the result of education? The name of Homer seems destined to run parallel with the course of time itself. And yet such was the entire destitution of the light of literature and science in his age, that we cannot now ascertain the land either of his birth or of his burial. Notwithstanding, however, this obscurity that rests upon his origin; notwithstanding this gloom that settles upon his history; notwithstanding this deep mental and moral midnight, in which all but the name of Homer seems to be involved and enveloped, we do know that he has kindled the purest fire, upon the highest altar that ever yet sent up its incense, even to Grecian skies.

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Our oppo

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Who, then, were his masters ? We answer he had no masters! The same creative power moulded his mighty mind, that moulded and brought within its energetic grasp the mental and material universe. He had no masters. The fountain of light was within him. He found himself in the possession of poetic feelings. Nature's God had bestowed upon him the faculty that gives birth to those feelings. He had only to follow their impulse and immortality was won. He had only to portray the creations of that faculty, and he is exhibited to all after times a solitary beacon on a benighted shore—an oasis amid the desert of ages.”—P. 30, 31.

As the objection that Phrenology leads to materialism and fatalism still continues to be urged with amazing pertinacity in many unenlightened quarters, we shall quote the reply given to it by Mr Dean, who treats the subject with conciseness and ability.

“ This science has no such tendency. It nowhere identifies the faculties with their organs. The faculties, in fact, no more constitute a part of their organs, than the music of a piano-forte constitutes a part of the instrument. The organs are the instruments, and the faculties the musical result of their play. This science simply notes that result, it observes phenomena, and from correspondencies deduces conclusions. The fact is indisputable, that there is a dependence of the entire mind upon the entire brain. That the mind is liable to diseased affection in its manifestations, to the explosion of mania, to the weakness of idiocy, is undeniable. I would refer it to the most rigid antimaterialist to decide which doctrine is the more reasonable—that which refers these mental phenomena to diseased affection of the organ in which the mind is known to exercise its powers, or that which refers them to diseased affections of the immaterial mind itself, implying its liability to maniacal hallucinations, or to the weakness of idiocy. From our knowledge and experience, it is correct to assume, that throughout the ample range of nature, whatever is subject to disease, is also subject to death. They are both parts of one great system.

Death is the ocean in which all the rivers of disease find a termination. If disease, therefore, can attach to the mind, what, I would ask, exempts it from the natural termination of that disease, a ceasing to be?

Again, if these diseased affections attach to the mind, I can see nothing in the death of the body calculated to divest it of that disease. The only legitimate effect of death is to hush the music of our material organs. If, then, the physic of the tomb is inadequate to afford a restorative remedy, mind must cross the dark barrier, subject to this diseased affection, and exhibit in another world the ravings of insanity, and the vacuity of idiocy.

“ But if it be conceded that diseased affections of the brain are

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