sylum, can
scarcely rid himself of the belief that every person he meets is insane.

The stranger, on entering the long room in which the convalescents were
assembled, felt, in the silence of the patients, and in their vague and
fantastic movements, that he was in a position where novelty, in general
the source of pleasure, was here associated only with pain. Their
startling looks, the absence of interest in some instances, and its
intensity in others, at the appearance of strangers, without any
intelligent motive in either case, produced a feeling that seemed to
bear the character of a disagreeable dream.

"All the patients here," said his conductor, "are not absolutely in a
state of convalescence. A great number of them are; but we also allow
such confirmed lunatics as are harmless to mingle with them. There is
scarcely a profession, or a passion, or a vanity in life, which has not
here its representative. Law, religion, physic, the arts, the sciences,
all contribute their share to this melancholy picture gallery. Avarice,
love, ambition, pride, jealousy, having overgrown the force of
reason, are here, as its ideal skeletons, wild and gigantic--fretting,
gambolling, moping, grinning, raving, and vaporing--each wrapped in
its own Vision, and indifferent to all the influence of the collateral
faculties. There, now, is a man, moping about, the very picture of
stolidity; observe how his heavy head hangs down until his chin rests
upon his breastbone, his mouth open and almost dribbling. That man, sir,
so unpoetical and idiotic in appearance, imagines himself the author of
Beattie's 'Minstrel' He is a Scotchman, and I shall call him over."

"Come here, Sandy, speak to this gentleman."

Sandy, without raising his lack-lustre eye, came over and replied,
"Aw--ay--'Am the author o' Betty's Menstrel;" and having uttered this
piece of intelligence, he shuffled across the room, dragging one foot
after the other, at about a quarter of a minute per step. Never was poor
Beattie so libellously represented.

"Do you see that round-faced, good-humored looking man, with a decent
frieze coat on?" said their conductor. "He's a wealthy and respectable
farmer from the county of Kilkenny, who imagines that he is Christ. His
name is Rody Rafferty."

"Come here, Rody."

Rody came over, and looking at the stranger, said, "Arra, now, do you
know who I am? Troth, I go bail you don't."

"No," replied the stranger, "I do not; but I hope you