Few are the readers, and we cannot boast to be of those few, who have been at the pains to toil through the many and voluminous writings of Emanuel Swedenborg. Indeed, it would not be far from the truth to say that there are very few persons who have thought it worth their while to study him at all seriously; he is commonly accounted a madman, who has had the singular fortune to persuade certain credulous persons that he was a seer. Nevertheless, whether lunatic or prophet, his character and his writings merit a serious and unbiased study. Madness, which makes its mark upon the world, and counts in its train many presumably sane people who see in it the highest wisdom, cannot justly be put aside contemptuously as undeserving a moment's grave thought. After all, there is no accident in madness; causality, not casualty, governs its appearance in the universe; and it is very far from being a good and sufficient practice to simply mark its phenomena, and straightway to pass on as if they belonged, not to an order, but to a disorder of events that called for no explanation. It is certain that there is in Swedenborg's revelations of the spiritual world a mass of absurdities sufficient to warrant the worst suspicions of his mental sanity; but, at the same time, it is not less certain that there are scattered in his writings conceptions of the highest philosophic reach, while throughout them is sensible an exalted tone of calm moral feeling which rises in many places to a real moral grandeur. These are the qualities which have gained him his best disciples, and they are qualites too uncommon in the world to be lightly despised, in whatever company they may be exhibited. I proceed then to give some account of Swedenborg, not purposing to make any review of his multitudinous publications, or any criticism of the doctrines announced in them with a matchless self-sufficiency; the immediate design being rather to present, by the help mainly of Mr. White's book, a sketch of the life and character of the man, and thus to obtain, and to endeavour to convey, some definite notion of what he was, what he did, and what should be concluded of him.*

As the necessity of providing accommodation for chronic cases of insanity in lunatic asylums, as well as for the aged and infirm, or chronic, cases in workhouses, is becoming more and more urgent, and is engrossing the attention of those concerned in the relief of the poor at the present time, it occurred to me, that enquiry into the causes of death amongst chronic cases of the insane might be a very fit subject to bring before the members of this association.

I do not pretend to have anything original to bring under your notice; but, solely with the desire of contributing toward the attainment of precision in the employment of remedies, I venture to ask the attention of the Society for a short space of time to a few remarks upon the use of the Bromides in certain of the Neuroses.

This institution for lunatics is situated near Hamburg, about a mile from the general hospital, and part of it was first opened in December, 1864. It is one of the most recent and complete asylums in Germany, and, the number of beds having been recently much increased, can accommodate about 370 patients. The land was cheap at the time of the construction, and therefore the grounds in which the buildings stand are very large; they are partly used as a farm. The principal building has the form of a square, open at one side, with numerous projecting portions, especially in the centre, where the administration is located, and officers' dwellings, kitchen, wash-house, and baths are found. The blocks which form this incomplete square have corridors running at one side, by which, however, they are not connected in the usual manner, but the connection is broken at the corners. The passages are 12 feet wide, lofty, and ventilated by end windows; they are warmed by hot water pipes.

Well sang the Psalmist: “If I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the universe, God is there.” Thou too, O cultivated reader, who too probably art no Psalmist, but a Prosaist, knowing God only by tradition, knowest thou any corner of the world where at least Force is not? The drop which thou shakest from thy wet hand, rests not when it falls, but to-morrow thou findest it swept away; already on the wings of the north wind it is nearing the Tropic of Cancer. How came it to evaporate and not lie motionless? Thinkest thou there is aught motionless; without force, and utterly dead?

The cerebral anatomist, if destitute of any leading idea as to what he should be searching for, must be labouring under considerable disadvantage when he examines the intimate structure of the brain; and since the study of his choice must, from its peculiar intricacy, demand his best attention, he cannot be expected to be as profound in his pyschology as he is in his anatomy. “It is interesting to remark,” says Wagner, “that wherever an insight into the nature of the functions performed by an organ has been wanting, there has the structure also remained more or less obscure; we feel the want of everything like a guiding principle in the anatomical inquiry; of this truth we have satisfactory assurance in the cases of the thyroid, thymus, and supra-renal bodies and spleen.”* Then, as regards the pyschologist proper, if he devotes his days and nights to the analysis of the mind's conscious and expressed operations, it is not in human nature that he should be a professed and original anatomist as well. Indeed, division of labour is more necessary, perhaps, in this obscure field of research than in any other. Now, it is as a pyschologist who, in the interest of truth, has deemed it his duty to explain mental phenomena in such a way as to be in harmony with the ascertained structure of the brain, that the writer offers the following remarks, hoping that they may not be unserviceable to the cerebral anatomist.

Annales Médico Psychologiques, vol. ix., x., xi. and xii., for 1867–68.

I. Physiology. “The Discoveries and Labours of Galileo,” by M. Parchappe, analysed by M. Brierre de Boismont “Mittermaier, on Capital Punishment, &c.,” by M. Brierre de Boismont. “Medico-psychological Studies on Shakespeare—Hamlet,” by M. Brierre de Boismont.