market. No less so, indeed, when the lessons are introduced by prayer and ended by flogging, than when the riotous spirit of youth is left to itself to gather motives and morals from the poetic didactics, bewildering ethics, and impure histories of an emasculated heathenism. Instruction should be valued only as it helps the mind forward to an acquaintance with natural and revealed facts; and as the proper inducement to study and research is happiness, this should be made to depend on fellowship with those who livingly diffuse the light they enjoy. Heaven claims our hearts for no other reason and on no other principle. It is the business of Christian education to make all knowledge Christian; to cultivate the heart with the understanding; that we may learn what is proper to the body for the sake of the soul, and be able to study God's works as well as His Word; that we may use this world without abusing it, and live, in respect to others as much as to ourselves, with entire devotion to the demands of our Maker and Redeemer. The right education of all the faculties cannot be too high nor too general. The education of Great Britain, and of course poor Ireland, nationally considered, is disgracefully and shockingly below what, as professedly Christian, it ought to be. Probably the best-educated district in the world is that of the canton of Zurich in Switzerland, where nearly a third of the public expenditure is devoted to practical schooling, and where, in proportion to the population, there are three times as many children under education as in England, that education, too, being thorough in every department, with a view to the qualification of the pupils for thinking as well as working, and the result is conspicuous in the high character and capability of the people. † * See Schools and Universities on the Continent. By Matthew Arnold. † See Appendix, note E. 325 CHAPTER III. PECULIAR EFFECTS OF INORDINATE MENTAL DETERMINATION. THE strongest brain will fail under the continuance of intense thought. All persons who have been accustomed to close study, will remember the utter and indescribable confusion that comes over the mind when the will has wearied the brain. A curious example has already been given in the case of Spalding, who tells us that his attention having been long kept on the stretch, and also greatly distracted, he was called upon to write a receipt, but he had no sooner written two words than he could proceed no further. For half an hour he could neither think consecutively nor speak, except in words which he did not intend. Afterwards he recovered, and found that instead of writing on the receipt 'fifty dollars, being half a year's rate,' &c., he had written fifty dollars, through the salvation of Bra-,' the last word being left unfinished, and without his having the least recollection of what he intended it to be. This state presents a specimen of partial delirium, or waking dream; the will still acting, but incapable of controlling the thoughts or connecting memory with present impression. This must depend on the state of nerve produced by the mental intensity, which, when continued to extreme exhaustion, we know to be capable of so altering the sensation, as that objects presented to the eye assume appearances which do not belong to them. Thus Sir Joshua Reynolds, after being occupied for many hours in painting, saw trees in lamp-posts, and moving shrubs in men and women. This kind of inability to command attention, or properly to use the brain, is most readily adduced by monotonous study. Thus astronomers may become mad without being undevout. Even Sir Isaac Newton was driven to the verge of insanity by too continuous observation of the heavens, and for many nights the recurring images of stars prevented sleep. Persons of lymphatic temperament are peculiarly liable to this exhaustion, and should therefore employ their minds with great caution, or otherwise their determination will prove the destruction of their reason; for, in fact, a persistence of this want of control over attention is insanity, as we see in those instances in which persons confound things together of an incongruous nature; as when the anatomist, having fatigued his nervous system by a long-continued dissection, talked of a town to which he referred as situated in the deltoid muscle. Disorder from excessive attention is sometimes manifested in a still odder manner, as in the case of the celebrated Dr. Watts, who, after great exertion of mind, thought his head too large to allow him to pass out at the study door. A gentleman, after delivering a lecture at the College of Surgeons, said that his head felt as if it filled the room. brief kind of insanity is attended with loss of memory and weakness of the senses, and is often cured by a glass of wine; but sometimes fatigue produces permanent insanity. Thus, in the 'German Psychological Magazine,' a case is related of a soldier who, after great fatigue, happened to read the Book of Daniel, and from that moment believed that he could perform miracles, such as plant an apple-tree, which, by his power, should bear cherries. When the nervous system becomes habituated to extreme exhaustion, determinate effort of mind sometimes induces a kind of catalepsy. A certain form of this malady occurs in paroxysms of ecstatic abstraction This suddenly seizing the person, and fixing him like a living statue; with the body slightly bent, every limb rigid with rapture, the arms elevated, the fore-finger pointed to some imagined object, the eyelids staring wide, the eyes turned up with an intense and motionless expression, and the lips a little separated; in short, the whole attitude and countenance expressive of the most awful admiration. This is the description of a real case arising from intense concentration of thought, continued without regard to bodily exercise or proper change in the mental object. In ecstasy or trance, the patient's mind is absorbed by some object of imagination; as the term ecstasy implies, persons so impressed are out of the body, engrossed in spiritual contemplations. The muscles are sometimes relaxed, at other times rigid; the will, however, often continues to exert an influence over certain parts of the body, such as the organs of voice; for though they are incapable of moving a limb, or being excited by any external stimulus, they nevertheless occasionally give expression to their feelings by singing or speaking. This kind of entrancing delirium is apt to occur in persons afflicted by nervous disorder, especially where the will is wayward; and may frequently be produced in them by powerful excitement of the imagination, or by mesmeric manipulations. It is stated by individuals well qualified to detect imposition, that in these cases there exists a kind of transference and concentration of intelligence in certain parts of the nervous system, so that a sort of oracular faculty is developed, and the subjects of this affection become capable of describing things beyond the range of their senses, and of foretelling events. Dr. Copland states that many of the Italian improvvisatori possess their peculiar faculty only in this state of ecstasy, or, as it may be called, abnormal consciousness, from resolute attention to ideas. Probably the mind and the nervous system are intensely excited for some time previous to the development of ecstasy. There is a morbid acuteness of feeling and thought, an inordinate employment of the attention, kept up by preceding sensations, or some absorbing train of ideas, which exhaust the sensorium, and bring it into that state in which it often appears to be in those persons who accustom themselves to abstract studies and reverie. This condition is more apt to occur when strong passions are associated with a weak body. A frequent and exhausting repetition of pleasurable feelings begets a marked predisposition to this disordered action of the brain. If all that is stated concerning ecstasy be true, we are forced to the conclusion, that after the exhaustion of brain is carried to a certain extent, the mind begins voluntarily to exert itself in a new and enlarged or more inventive manner, so as to exhibit phenomena which have been named lucidity, exaltation of faculty, clairThe transition state may present apvoyance, &c. pearances like those of common delirium, dreaming, somnambulism, and madness. It is often accompanied by convulsions. A few cases of an extraordinary kind may best illustrate this curious subject. It has been testified that cataleptic patients often manifest a clairvoyant faculty. A patient of Petetin, President of the Medical Society of Lyons, in this state, is said by him to have distinguished in succession several cards laid on her stomach under the bed-clothes; she told the hour of a watch held in the closed hand of an enquirer, and recognised a medal grasped in the hand of another; she read a letter placed under the waistcoat of her physician, and mentioned the number of gold and silver coins contained in each end of a purse which had been slipped there by a sceptic. She told each of the persons present what he possessed about him most remarkable, |