e more frequent
scourges. And most of all, or with most darkness in its train, comes the
sickness of the brain--lunacy--which, visiting nearly one thousand in
every million, must, in every populous nation, make many ruins in each
particular day. 'Babylon in ruins,' says a great author, 'is not so sad
a sight as a human soul overthrown by lunacy.' But there is a sadder
even than _that_,--the sight of a family-ruin wrought by crime is even
more appalling. Forgery, breaches of trust, embezzlement, of private or
public funds--(a crime sadly on the increase since the example of
Fauntleroy, and the suggestion of its great feasibility first made by
him)--these enormities, followed too often, and countersigned for their
final result to the future happiness of families, by the appalling
catastrophe of suicide, must naturally, in every wealthy nation, or
wherever property and the modes of property are much developed,
constitute the vast majority of all that come under the review of public
justice. Any of these is sufficient to make shipwreck of all peace and
comfort for a family; and often, indeed, it happens that the desolation
is accomplished within the course of one revolving sun; often the whole
dire catastrophe, together with its total consequences, is both
accomplished and made known to those whom it chiefly concerns within one
and the same hour. The mighty Juggernaut of social life, moving onwards
with its everlasting thunders, pauses not for a moment to spare--to
pity--to look aside, but rushes forward for ever, impassive as the
marble in the quarry--caring not for whom it destroys, for the how many,
or for the results, direct and indirect, whether many or few. The
increasing grandeur and magnitude of the social system, the more it
multiplies and extends its victims, the more it conceals them; and for
the very same reason: just as in the Roman amphitheatres, when they grew
to the magnitude of mighty cities (in some instances accommodating
400,000 spectators, in many a fifth part of that amount), births and
deaths became ordinary events, which, in a small modern theatre, are
rare and memorable; and exactly as these prodigious accidents
multiplied, _pari passu_, they were disregarded and easily concealed:
for curiosity was no longer excited; the sensation attached to them was
little or none.

From these terrific tragedies, which, like monsoons or tornadoes,
accomplish the work of years in an hour, not merely an impressive l