tions on
investigation the most thorough and conscientious. Take the vote of the
wealth and education of Europe to-day, and Abraham Lincoln will be
pronounced a fanatic vindicating the claims of abstract benevolence
"through seas of blood and fire." Go back into the past, and consult one
Festus, a highly respectable Roman governor, and we shall learn that
Paul was beside himself, nay, positively mad, with his much learning. We
repeat that it is for the infinite advantage of society that exceptional
men are impelled to precipitate their power into very narrow channels.
The most eminent helpers of civilization have been penetrated by their
single mission,--they have known that in concentration and courage lay
their highest usefulness. Let us not judge men who are other than these.
We will not question the importance of a Goethe, with his scientific
amusements, stage-plays, ducal companionships, and art of taking good
care of himself; but we cannot deny at least an equal sanity to the
"fanatic" Milton, who deemed it disgraceful to pursue his own
gratification while his countrymen were contending against oppression,
who was content to sacrifice sight in Liberty's defence, and to live an
"extreme" protester against the profligacies of power and place.

But we linger too long from the solid instruction of this book. Dr. Ray
considers the existence of insanity or remarkable eccentricity in a
previous generation a prolific source of mental unsoundness. He
addresses words of most solemn warning to those who have not yet formed
the most important connection in life. A brain free from all congenital
tendencies to disease results from a rigid compliance with the laws of
parentage. The intermarriage of those related by blood is no uncommon
cause of mental deterioration. Dr. Ray thinks that the facts collected
in France and America upon this point are much more conclusive than a
recent Westminster reviewer will allow. We are told that in this country
the mingling of common blood in marriage is more frequent than is
generally supposed, and that, of all agencies which have to do with the
prevalence of insanity and idiocy, this is probably the most potent. A
vigorous body is of course an important condition to high mental health,
and what is said upon this head is tersely written and very sensible. We
are told that "those much-enduring men and women who encountered the
privations of the colonial times have been succeeded by a race incapa