Scene in a Madhouse.

“Madness! thou chaos of the brain,            }

What art, that pleasure giv’st and pain?    }

Tyranny of fancy’s reign!

Mechanic fancy! that can build

Vast labyrinths and mazes wild,

With rude, disjointed, shapeless measure,

Fill’d with horror, fill’d with pleasure!

Shapes of horror, that would even

Cast doubt of mercy upon Heaven;

Shapes of pleasure, that but seen,

Would split the shaking sides of Spleen.

    “O vanity of age! here see

The stamp of Heaven effaced by thee!

The headstrong course of youth thus run,

What comfort from this darling son?

His rattling chains with terror hear,

Behold death grappling with despair!

See him by thee to ruin sold,

And curse thyself, and curse thy gold!”

See our hero then, in the scene before us, raving in all the dismal horrors of hopeless insanity, in the hospital of Bethlehem, the senate of mankind, where each man may find a representative; there we behold him trampling on the first great law of nature, tearing himself to pieces with his own hands, and chained by the leg to prevent any further mischief he might either do to himself or others. But in this scene, dreary and horrid as are its accompaniments, he is attended by the faithful and kind-hearted female whom he so basely betrayed. In the first plate we see him refuse her his promised hand. In the fourth, she releases him from the harpy fangs of a bailiff; she is present at his marriage; and in the hope of relieving his distress, she follows him to a prison. Our artist, in this scene of horror, has taken an opportunity of pointing out to us the various causes of mental blindness; for such, surely, it may be called, when the intuitive faculties are either destroyed or impaired. In one of the inner rooms of this gallery is a despairing wretch, imploring Heaven for mercy, whose brain is crazed with lip-labouring superstition, the most dreadful enemy of human kind; which, attended with ignorance, error, penance and indulgence, too often deprives its unhappy votaries of their senses. The next in view is one man drawing lines upon a wall, in order, if possible, to find out the longitude; and another, before him, looking through a paper, by way of a telescope. By these expressive figures we are given to understand that such is the misfortune of man, that while,............