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individual enterprise. You would have no patience left in witnessing the neglect every where of useful and comfortable improvements; and the tenacity with which the people adhere to their old and stolid habits, would set you mad. A Jersey ferry-boat would be a magnificent establishment on the Seine. All the trade, nearly, of this great city, and of a rich and intervening country, has its outlet by the Havre; and all this immense trade is carried - two hundred miles- in wagons! They are just begining to talk about a rail-road, but no one expects to outlive its accomplishment. With American enterprise, it would be made in six months: every million employed in it would bring the revenue of ten; and Havre would become one of the first cities in Europe. would see a thousand persons here employed to lift the mud from the beds of the rivers and docks, which, with proper machinery, could be removed with a tenth of that number, and so of every thing else. The established doctrine is, that improvement in machinery and skill would throw laborers out of employ. If this bungling and clumsy machinery were superseded-if palaces and other luxuries were discouraged how would all this people get their subsistence? is the common cry. It does not occur to them, that they might be employed in making a rail-road to the Havre, - in turning their miserable streets into decent walks, and their barns of houses into comfortable dwellings. If the labor of production were diminished ten-fold, through all the branches of industry, by machinery or increased skill; if a man could produce ten hats, or ten bushels of wheat where he now does one, and could procure for each hat or bushel, ten times as much of other produce in exchange, it does seem to me the most difficult of all things to conceive how the community should not be ten times richer by such a policy. If it be not, we ought then to pray that our lands should be unproductive, and that our citizens should be stupid, that a greater number may be employed in feeding and clothing us. And yet here such a doctrine is hooted at as nonsense; and all the people are delighted that the king is employing half a dozen of millions in making water-spouts in the gardens of Versailles! Happy America' if she would but know her own happiness; if she could but rest_contented with her homely republicanism, and not seek to emulate the ruinous pride of these European nations. You who live so snugly upon your farms and in your towns, in the entire possession of your industry, and who see the national wealth of your country expand under the influence of an unfettered enterprise you ought to pray Heaven, in all the fervency of devotion, to preserve the institutions which accomplish so many good things for your happiness those blessed institutions, so rarely possessed on the earth, and which all the wicked passions of men are busy to pervert and destroy.

PARIS is built up generally with houses from six to ten stories high, and streets from twenty-five to thirty feet wide- damp and filthy - and you can scarce tell cloudy from fair weather, for in most of them the sun never reaches the pavement. They are laid with concare stones, about eight inches square, and are without side-walks; so that men,

women, and carriages, are huddled together, impeding each other, and great vigilance is necessary to escape danger. Through the middle of the city, running east and west, is a street as wide as Broadway, called the Boulevards, and in different quarters are elegant gardens, such as the Palais Royal, the Tuilleries, and the Luxembourg. In these choice places, the elegance and fashion of the metropolis are assembled. In the street is an everlasting rumbling of carriages at all hours, night and day; and the whole day there is one general cry of hoarse and screaming voices of men and women selling their wares, or reading proclamations to the crowd. The first week of my stay, I attended business, and looked at curiosities. I felt generally a kind of giddiness, like one half drunk, and retired every night greatly fatigued to my room, where my acquaintances were a couple of chairs, a mahogany table, and brick floor, (the common fashion of the city.) It is a truth pretty well tested, but not always attended to, that, especially at my age, the inveterate habits of life cannot be changed without violence. I had been all my life at home, always with intimate friends, and a large family gathered about me in the evening. Locum non animum mutant, qui trans mare currunt, is an old line of Horace, which I now understand better than at the academy. The second week passed like the first, and the third came upon me with a load of blue devils. I went out to hunt acquaintance, and present a few of my letters. I had a polite bow, an amiable smile, very happy if I can serve you:' and there the acquaintance ended. This, I find, where no interests are concerned, is all that can be expected from a letter of introduction; and in a large world like this, where so many fools like myself are daily coming to town,' no more should be expected.

friend Du

6

Still haunted by the blue devils, I set out one bright morning, being resolved to give sorrow to the winds. I looked up at Napoleon's statue on the column of the Place Vendome, and thought of his troubles. What were my petty infelicities to his? Fortifying myself with the comparison, I travelled on magnanimously, and called upon my old I found him in the mad-house. There he was, with tears on his cheeks, talking his nonsense. Here was another lesson. I had known him prosperous, and in the full possession of all his faculties. I now saw him under the most distressing affection to which poor human nature is liable. I trudged a mile or two, through a long lane of a street, where the sun had never shone, till I reached the Seine. A little white house stood by the river side. I entered it (many people going in and out,) from curiosity, and here I saw three dead persons stretched upon black marble tables. They were suicides. Several of these poor wretches are brought here daily, and exposed three days and nights, for recognition by their friends, or acquaintances. I soon quitted this ill-omened and gloomy place. I returned fatigued and dispirited to my room; broke my watch by accident on the hard floor, upset my table in the dark, and broke the same; crawled to bed, and passed the night in a high fever. Woke in

*Campbell, in a paper on London, published some years ago in the New Monthly Magazine, makes a similar observation respecting the effects of sight-seeing, upon strangers in the British capital. Several cases of insanity, of considerable continuance, had been traced to that cause. EDITORS KNICKERBOCKER.

the morning unable to rise, with my porter for my sick-nurse, -one of that class of servants, common here, who would not scruple to assist a stranger into another world, that they might appropriate to themselves the little things he may leave in this. Drugged myself, with a physician to help me, for a week, ere I was well.

What a delightful thing it is to travel in foreign countries! Do not fear, from what I have said, that I am declining; for Jeremiah, who made great lamentations, lived to a good old age. I have plucked up courage and health, and read old Seneca, a kind of medicine that I often take as nervous women do elixir.

Adieu!

THOUGHTS ON INSANITY.

BY WILLIAM RUSH, M. D.

IT may be said with truth, that the mind of man contains within itself the materials of his happiness and misery. The author of nature sent him into existence with capacity to receive impressions through his senses, which were ultimately to accomplish the design of making him happy, amidst the heterogeneous elements in which it was his destiny to be cast. This great result was the human mind; a work worthy of the Creator without fault-beyond criticism in a word, as pure as the tenement selected for its abode. This innate capacity man saw was of slow growth, affording him a moral, that all which is good and great in this world is reached only by the hand of Time. He saw the shortlived intellect of the brute, and its offspring acquiring, in a moment, (as it were,) by the magic of instinct, all the habitudes of its parent. He wondered at, more than reasoned upon, these phenomena, until progressive lessons of knowledge taught him, that the Creator sheds the same intellectual light and shade upon animated nature, as he did with his first subtle agent upon the beautiful landscape of earth.

The thoughts here hastily thrown out, are limited to the consideration of some of the facts developed by the human mind in infancy, and in manhood, the inferences deduced from these facts offering an explanation of the causes which lead remotely to the severest of man's afflic tions-Insanity. The elements of the mind are as pure as the source whence they sprung: 'and God saw every thing that he had made, and behold, it was very good.' How is it then, by worldly influences, that these sacred elements of wisdom, virtue, and happiness, often fall so far short of their original intent? - planned by omnipotence - foiled by finite agency! The Creator, in full knowledge of the fitness of things, gave man his senses, and placed him among the outward phenomena of nature, an inheritance sufficiently large to meet every demand of humanity. What more could man have asked for? —or ought he to have been originally possessed of? - since so much of his existence was to be consumed in gradually moulding these early impressions from outward objects into the form of mind.

This result, we have said, is the work of time and wisely so; for we cannot imagine a condition of existence more painful, than a want of exact ratio between the power of external agents to excite impressions, and the capacity of the senses to receive them. Hence the propriety of withholding sudden excess in the objects of the senses, from an infant. Perhaps crying, the universal accident of infancy, in itself useful, in its action upon the organs of respiration and speech, may arise from the sharp impressions made by external agents upon the newly-created and delicate senses. It would be a difficult task, and one foreign to our thoughts, to mark the era when Reason assumes her absolute sway over the attributes of the mind. There are children occasionally to be met with, who, instead of slowly receiving the elements of knowledge, seem, as it were, to have 'stolen a march' upon time, and placed themselves in advance of God's great design. Such children, it is said, do not live long; and if they do, Nature's early and extravagant outlay is seldom

returned with proportional interest, at maturity. Like animals in oxygen air, they appear to live too fast-consuming in a moment the provision of a life-time. In our present ignorance of every capability of matter acting in concert with the elements of mind, we refer these occurrences to the exceptions of Nature's general rule; though perhaps when the light of future knowledge shall strike this subject with full effect, the minds of these youthful human anomalies will be better analyzed and understood.

The progressive action of external agents upon the senses, produce in good time two attributes of mind eminently conspicuous in childrenmemory and imagination-blessings wisely intended for their pleasure and improvement. Infants soon know their parents and nurses, and readily distinguish the faces, and even the voices, of those about them; and when older, who has not seen these little merry creatures at play, dressing themselves, or perhaps a favourite dog, or kitten, in the most ludicrous and fanciful attire? Small as these mental resources appear, yet they are the foundation of knowledge-the day-break of imagination. Children at an early age eagerly pursue the knowledge of things. Their inquisitiveness is proverbial, and their memories are usually retentive, which readily leads them to an acquaintance with the relationships of objects around them: but their imaginations are active, oftener taking the lead of, than following, their progressive steps of knowledge. Hence their fear, and a predilection for the marvellous, so universally observable in young people. The mind, too, in its present state, soon learns to frame analogies between physical and moral objects. What delicate machinery to handle and put together! What an important trust to commit to the care of Education! When the infant's school shall be the nursery, and home the most enticing spot to children, then may we not hope to see God's final purpose with the human mind, attained? This is the period in the existence of children, when watchful and intelligent parents, with mild yet uncompromising purpose, should devote their energies to perfect the task which Nature has begun. Now is the time to plant wellselected seeds of knowledge in the minds of their offspring. They will grow luxuriantly, for the soil is rich, and not preoccupied. Let parents cultivate it with their own hands, that when the harvest of virtue and happiness is ripe in their children, they may reap, and share with them the high reward of true parental affection. Heathen mythology had countless advisers upon the plan of man's prospective happiness. The wise and virtuous sons of Greece and Rome were swayed by its councils. It perished, and lives only in the memory of man. In harmony with the laws of the universe, it was eclipsed by the simplicity of the Christian system of religion, which proclaims that one God, with two self-emanations, are enough to secure the temporal and eternal welfare of man. With reverence to the analogy which God has here given us, may we not, upon the subject of human education, adopt the reflection of his wisdom, and endeavour to perfect his scheme of mental improvement, by intrusting it only to the enlightened and accomplished few?

It is almost impossible to keep thought a prisoner. Our own has already escaped, in taking a hasty glance at education: we hope it may reach the reflection of abler minds.

Whatever may be the best means of attaining the ends of education, certain it is, that in proportion as the elements of youthful intellect are