boarding and keeping, we learned that when the patients are sent from private families, the charge is from six to twelve hundred francs; but when sent from public charities, it is no more than two or three hundred francs per annum. The magistrates of Brussels maintain a superintendent at Gheel, whose office it is to take care that justice be done to their patients. He has an inspector under him, who examines strictly into particular cases, and these officers, with two physicians, form a commission of superintendence for the patients of both Brussels and Malines. Several of these gentlemen, to whom we were introduced, were extremely polite in giving us every information respecting their singular establishment.

The maniacs who are sent to Gheel. are for the most part incurable, or are brought to try the miraculous powers of the shrine of St. Nymphna. Among the most prevalent causes of mental derangement, the usual enumeration was made to us of religious despondence and melancholy; unsuccessful and deluded ambition; disappointments in love; and domestic misfortunes-of all which, the most dreadful cases, and those the most hopeless of cure, arise from religious causes. We observed one singularlooking being with long, lank, black hair hanging down to his shoulders, his

hands folded on his breast, and his sunk. eye fixed on the ground: who, at times, broke out into loud ebullitions of mirth and singing. On inquiring into his history, we found that he was persuaded his future condemnation was unalterably fixed, and he was a hopeless reprobate who could not expect mercy; though his devotion was such that he praised God for his goodness in thinking him worthy to be condemned to eternal punishment. It reminded us of Tobias Swinden's wild opinion, that the sun was hell, and that its light being caused by the burning of the wicked, God was glorified in their punishment. Suicides are very rare: thirty years ago a patient cut his throat in the church, during the nine day's ceremony for his cure. The mortality among the patients is a little more than that of the other inhabitants; but the females, in particular, are subject to a diarrhoea, which often proves fatal. When their mental alienation is intermittent, it is frequently cured, when the patient can be induced, during the sane intervals, to engage in rural labours. It is a singular fact, indeed, that more cures take place in the suburbs than in the town, though in the former the patients are worse treated. These last two years the number of patients has been about 400..

M. S.

THE Salique law in France prevented women from sitting on the throne, but it did not prevent them from making a tool of its occupant, for the accomplishment of always the most selfish, and of ten the most ridiculous, purposes. In a comparatively free government, on the other hand, and especially where there is any thing like a free press, the intrigues which give women the supreme power are exposed 'ere they be ripened.

Those circumstances necessarily influence the education and habits of the English lady. Trained up for enjoying the society of her own sex, she is more mild and soft in her manners than the females of any other country; and, though she be less calculated for being the companion of man in his thoughts and his schemes, she is not, upon that account, the less lovely or desirable.

It has been said, that, 66 an Italian lady will inspire you; and a French one will amuse you; but an English one will love you." This is true; not that each has the quality alleged, and wants the other, but that each is marked by her predominant character.

The separation of the sexes in their youth, the modes of education, and the slender hopes that English ladies have from political intrigue, produce a certain censoriousness and disposition to pick holes in the character of their own sex, which is not found in such intensity any where else. This does not, of course, apply to the very highest classes of society. Among such, the national character, whatever it may be, is never found to be strongly marked. Courtiers and court nobles are, like kings and priests, of the same family all over the world; and locality in situa

tion, manners, or politics, has much less influence upon them than upon the other classes of society. In England, however, persons of this class have a much less distinct character than in other countries. The influence of wealth is continually raising individuals, through all the gradations of rank, up to the peerage; and the reaction, of the same cause, is as constantly bringing down the old families, and forcing them either to become the debtors of plebeian money-lenders, or put their noble hands to some sort of work. Those circumstances stamp upon the English nobility a very considerable portion of that want of character, which distinguishes the males, and of those peculiarities which distinguish the females.

As English ladies are much more educated for the society of each other, and disposed to give one another the benefit of advice, so they are much more intolerant of each other's frailties, than those of any other nation whatever. The education and habits do not necessarily lessen the tendency to become frail; but they throw an almost inseparable bar in the way of those who have once erred. This, again, makes the distinction between those who have been known to err, and those who have not been known to err, much more striking than it is any where else; and, if this does not operate in preserving the virtue of the former, it, at least, entails upon the latter a greater depth and hopelessness of misery and suffering than in any other country; and while England makes a public boast of the purity and elegance of those of her daughters who have not erred, she might, if she chose, boast equally of the numbers of the very flower of her daughters whom re

lentless custom has consigned to infamy and ruin, upon grounds in which there are more of tenderness than of turpitude,- -more to pity, and even to admire, than to punish. It seems, however, to be the nature of all peculiarly rigid systems, whether of manners or of religion, to produce saints who are pure in proportion to the numbers of the inevitably damned, from among whom they are elected.

The vengeance of the infallible is not the only flaming sword which keeps the erring from the path that leads back to honourable life. For when the error is committed by a married lady, when she has, perhaps, after a forced marriage with a man she hated, and after years of misery and neglect, felt the return of a tenderness which the brutal conduct of her lord had extinguished, and, in an unguarded hour, (very much, haply, to the said lord's joy) eloped with another; there the law allows him to follow her still, to record her error upon the pages of every journal in the kingdom; and, by harassing the paramour with a fine, do what in it lies to get her ill-treated at the hands of him who, in the unfortunate turnings-up of chance, has become her only protector and her only friend. No conduct can be either more cruel or more absurd than this: If the husband feels any loss at all, from the departure of his wife, it is a loss which money can in no way make up; and, as that money can have no effect upon the lady, unless it be to procure ill-usage for her, it can answer no purpose but to proclaim the mean and mercenary disposition of him, at whose instance, in whose name, and for whose emolument, it is sued for and recovered.

say these gentlemen of the tender conscience, is the first step towards confusion-anarchy-rebellion! But this hue and cry, like that raised by the wild Indians, when on the point of rushing to the attack, has had its effect-it has either damped the spirit of those who were drawing out their batteries in defence of truth and justice, so as to deter them from the contest; or it has rendered their shock too weak to produce any lasting impression. There is a set of people, and they, perhaps, form the larger part of the community, a very good, plain, pains-taking sort of beings, but whose pockets withall weigh heavier than their heads, who have been bred up, from their early years, in a sort of superstitious veneration for the clergy, and who consider every syllable breathed against their spiritual pastors as so many pounds weight in the scale, which is hereafter to decide upon their everlasting weal or woe. Upon such persons the cant about church and state has produced, as your doctor would say, the desired effect. But the world is now, or, at least, ought to be, too old to be terrified at such bugbears. This was all very well in those good days of yore, when a happy sinner would purchase absolution and remission for a pound of farthing rushlights-when a man's conscience was troubled within him, at the sight of a sheet of foolscap, (for they did not use Bath-post in those days) scrawled all over with denunciations, anathemas, and the Lord knows what, yclept a "Bull." This was all very

well when men walked about with their eyes shut, and ran against every post in their way with their eyes openit was a mutual benefit to the priest and layman-the former knew it to be his policy to keep the other from prying into his secrets; and the latter, from his ignorance, reaped the advantage of an easy conscience. But the days of chivalry are gone!"-men boast of being freed from the shackles of religious trickery but are they?-is not the same policy still preserved among the clergy?—and is not the world just as much duped by it as it was heretofore? If not, what means all this outcry? Why is one body of the state to be exempt from that scrutiny to which all others, high and low, are subjected? If their motives, principles, and actions are as pure as they would have them

appear to be, they would rather court than check inquiry-and this inquiry, so far from bringing the church into disrepute, and subverting the government, would combine and strengthen both. The priest is not now a distinct member-he is just as much a smatterer in politics as in theology-perhaps more so he is no longer a private, but a public character. Your bishops may sit in the house of lords-and do upon occasions; and your country parson is nine times out of ten a magistrate. Whether this is right or wrong I do not intend to discuss-my reason for mentioning it was merely a tacit mode of implying, that when a man thrusts himself into notice, and quits his obscurity, he has no right to grumble at the discants which are made upon him, but must expect to receive censure for his actions if they are incorrect, as well as praise if they are praise-worthy. To wind up this long preamble, let me say then that the church, either as a body, or as individuals, have no more reason to be exempt from public remarks, than any other set of men. Suppose, my dear fellow, because John Bull ridiculed Sir H. Davy's foppery, that the chemists were to charge him with disaffection to the reigning power, and establish their imputation upon similar grounds to those used by the clergy-that he wished to throw disrepute upon chemistry—and what would be the result?-why, no one would buy drugs-and then his majesty, or the privy-council, could not have a "black dose," when they happened to be disordered-they must die-and John's paper on Sir Humphrey was evident treason. Suppose the lawyers were to pursue the same plan-suppose Brougham, upon any censure which appeared in print on any gentleman of the longrobe, were to use the following argument-"This attack, my lord, is clearly and palpably put forth for no other purpose than to aid and abet anarchy and confusion-the aim is to throw a slur over the members of the bar, in the hopes that no one will place a brief in their hands-the issue will be, that the laws will fall into disuse-every thing will be done with violencemight will overcome right-and what are we then to expect but rapine, bloodshed, violence, and chaotic confusion?" "Spectatum admissi risum teneatis, amici.›