Part 13

It is a sad sight that of an assembly of insane men and women. At the asylum to which I refer they are very humane people, and very successful in their treatment of the distressing cases constantly occurring, and twice a year--at Christmas and Midsummer--they give an entertainment, at which the better-behaved lunatics attend, and seemingly enjoy themselves very much. I was recently at one, and when I arrived, found that a field adjoining the asylum had been set apart for the purpose. There were about five hundred lunatics, male and female, present, and besides there were several gentlemen and ladies present, spectators like myself. It was a lovely afternoon, and there was music and dancing, and playing cricket, and battledore and shuttlecock, and all the various enjoyments of out-door life; but in all these matters I found the attendants appeared to take the initiative; still the poor creatures seemed to enjoy themselves much, and were happy in their way. Yet the pleasure-seeker will not go to such a spectacle again. I do not say the vulgar idea of the maniac was realized; on the contrary, the poor creatures seemed decent and very well behaved--but there was a pitiable want of fine physical development, there were in abundance crooked forms and stunted figures. You do not like to see what a poor thing is man when his reason is dethroned. Of course the refractory patients we do not see on such occasions, but, looking up at a window, I saw one woman's face--as she viewed the scene in which she might not participate--so wild in its anger and hopeless in its despair, that that face haunts me yet. It set me thinking how a woman could get into that state. Perhaps her father and mother, ignorant of physiological laws, had married, and she had been the result; or the ignorance of her friends, or her own ignorance--or the competition of modern life--or the wrongdoing of others--had precipitated a catastrophe which otherwise might never have occurred, and thus society pays indirectly for its ignorance far more than it would have to do for a genuine useful education. Think of what desolated homes these poor creatures form a portion. Remember what a fearful cost it is to the respectable hard-working amongst us, who can barely manage to make two ends meet, to have to rear such palatial residences for our pauper lunatics. The asylum of which I write in its erection cost the county an enormous sum--in its maintenance it does ditto--and I hear it is now in an insecure state, firm as it looks, and that the county of Middlesex will have to spend upon it some tens of thousands of pounds more.

I once visited this place in the winter-time; a large hall was lighted up, and there were some very pretty dissolving views exhibited, and there was dancing and music and eating and drinking going on. The room was covered with laurels and flowers and banners, and, of course, there were many ladies and gentlemen present, and the place had a cheerful air; and all confessed it was a good thing to give the poor creatures a little innocent amusement. But only think of dancing with lunatics--and such ugly ones too--and being held by the buttonhole by some wild-eyed ancient mariner. Coleridge might have come here and written:

"He held him with his glistening eye, The wedding guest stood still, And listen'd like a child-- The mariner has his will."

But if the wedding guest stays here long, he would not be in a fit state for the wedding--and still less would he be so if he goes over the building. What a contrast the present treatment of lunatics is to that which prevailed till lately! The exposure of the wretched system pursued at Bethlem, which took place in 1814, in consequence of the investigation of a parliamentary committee, appears to have been productive of great good. The visitors thus describe one of the women's galleries:--"One of the side-rooms contained about ten patients, each chained by one arm or leg to the wall, the chain allowing them merely to stand up by the bench or form fixed to the wall, or sit down again. The nakedness of each patient was covered by a blanket gown only. The blanket gown is a blanket formed something like a dressing gown, with nothing to fasten it in parts. The feet even were naked." Many women were locked up in cells, naked and chained, on straw, with only one blanket for a covering; and the windows being unglazed, the light in winter was shut out for the sake of warmth. In the men's rooms, their nakedness and their mode of confinement, continues the report from which we have already quoted, gave this room the appearance of a dog-kennel. At this period the committee for months together made no inspection of the inmates. The house surgeon was in an insane state himself, and still oftener drunk; and the keepers were often in the latter state; yet at this very time the governors spent 600 pounds in opposing a bill for regulating mad-houses, and I dare say they cried out lustily, No centralization!--no interference with vested interests! as enlightened Englishmen and parochial dignitaries are wont to do in our days.

Could we not do without lunatic asylums, if society gave up its drinking customs? Not exactly; but their number might be very much decreased. Two-thirds of our lunatics become so through drink. "They are very bad at first, sir," said one of my informants to me, "but after a little while they get quieter, and perhaps they are cured in two or three months." And yet I find all these lunatics are supplied with beer. "They has two half-pints a day, sir, and when they work they gets two half-pints more, and very good beer it is, sir," continued my informant, "as strong as any man need drink." Now is not this preposterous? Men who drink till they become lunatics should be taught to do without it; but they are allowed their beer even in the asylum, and when they go out they begin drinking again, and of course relapse. Thus we keep feeding our lunatic asylums, at the very time we profess to cure lunatics. I admit these places are in many respects well managed--that the buildings are commodious--that the attention is good--that the governors are humane, and the medical officers vigilant; but which is the truer humanity, to take care of the man when in a lunatic asylum, or to keep him out of it altogether?

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THE END.

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JOHN CHILDS AND SON, PRINTERS.

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JUST PUBLISHED,

_Price_ 3_s._ 6_d._, _bound in cloth_, SECOND EDITION, REVISED AND ENLARGED,

THE LONDON PULPIT.

BY

JAMES EWING RITCHIE.

Contents: The Religious Denominations of London--Sketches of the Rev. J. M. Bellew--Dale--Liddell--Maurice--Melville--Villiers--Baldwin Brown--Binney--Dr Campbell--Lynch--Morris--Martin--Brock--Howard Hinton--Sheridan Knowles--Baptist Noel--Spurgeon--Dr Cumming--Dr James Hamilton--W. Forster--H. Ierson--Cardinal Wiseman--Miall--Dr Wolf, &c. &c.

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OPINIONS OF THE PRESS.

The subject is an interesting one, and it is treated with very considerable ability. Mr Ritchie has the valuable art of saying many things in few words; he is never diffuse, never dull, and succeeds in being graphic without becoming flippant. Occasionally his strength of thought and style borders rather too closely on coarseness; but this fault of vigorous natures is counterbalanced by compensatory merits--by an utter absence of cant, a manly grasp of thought, and a wise and genial human-heartedness. The book is a sincere book; the writer says what he means, and means what he says. In these half-earnest days it is a comfort to meet with any one who has "the courage of his opinions," especially on such a subject as the "London Pulpit."--_Daily News_.

"One of the cleverest productions of the present day."--_Morning Herald_.

"Mr Ritchie is just the man to dash off a series of portraits, bold in outline, strikingly like the originals in feature and expression, and characterized by bright and effectual colouring. We have here photographed a group of the most distinguished pulpit orators of the metropolis, of all religious denominations and sects."--_Civil Service Gazette_.

"The style of Mr Ritchie is always lively and fluent, and oftentimes eloquent. It comes the nearest to Hazlitt's of any modern writer we know. His views and opinions are always clear, manly, and unobjectionable as regards the manner in which they are set forth. Many, no doubt, will not agree with them, but none can be offended at them. As we have already remarked, Mr Ritchie does not write as a sectarian, and it is impossible to collect from the treatise to what sect he belongs. The tendency of these sketches is to introduce into the pulpit a better style of preaching than what we have been accustomed to."--_Critic_.

"Mr Ritchie has written in a graphic, nervous, and most just spirit."--_Court Circular_.

"Written in a fluent and easy style."--_Weekly Times_.

"The personal sketches will engage attention; for the author has evidently been a close and attentive observer."--_News of the World_.

"Mr Ritchie's pen-and-ink sketches of the popular preachers of London are as life-like as they are brilliant and delightful. The thought of producing them was a happy one, and has been carried out in the volume before us with much agreeable animation. The collection of silhouettes herein presented to our contemplation will be especially acceptable, we conjecture, to our country cousins, as a guide among the more generally known of the metropolitan ecclesiastics. It will be perceived at a glance that the writer has familiarized himself with the subject, before undertaking its treatment. Chapter after chapter brings the popular preachers of the Capital before our mind's eye in a sort of stately clerical procession."--_The Sun_.

"Without going so far as the late Sir Robert Peel, and saying that there are three ways of viewing this as well as every other subject, it will be allowed that the clerical body may be contemplated either from within one of their special folds, and under the influence of peculiar religious views, or in a purely lay historical manner, and, so we suppose we ought to say, from the 'platform of humanity' at large. The latter is the idea developed in Mr Ritchie's volume, and cleverly and amusingly it is done. One great merit is, that his characters are not unnecessarily spun out. We have a few rapid dashes of the pencil, and then the mind is relieved by a change of scene and person . . . He displays considerable discrimination of judgment, and a good deal of humour."--_The Inquirer_.

"There is considerable verisimilitude in these sketches, though they are much too brief to be regarded as more than mere outlines. It is possible, however, to throw character even into an outline, and this is done with good effect in several of these smart and off-hand compositions."--_Tait_.

"It is lively, freshly written, at times powerful, and its facts carefully put together. It bears the stamp of an earnest spirit, eager in its search after truth, and strongly set against affectation and pretence of every sort."--_Globe_.

"Some of the sketches are very good."--_Literary Gazette_.

"They are penned in a just spirit, and are of a character to afford all the information that may be needed on the subjects to which they refer. The author's criticisms on preachers and preaching are candid, and for the most part truthful. This book ought therefore to be popular."--_Observer_.

"They are written with vigour and freedom, and are marked by a spirit of fairness and justice--an admirable trait, if we recollect how much the spirit of partisanship governs such strictures as a rule."--_Weekly Dispatch_.

"A sketch of the comparative force of the religious denominations in London, and notes upon the chief popular preachers, orthodox or dissentient, republished from a newspaper--we think the Weekly News and Chronicle. The book, which is written in a sufficiently impartial spirit, will interest many people, and offend few."--_Examiner_.

"In this volume we have within a moderate space pen-and-ink sketches of most of the popular preachers of the metropolis. We are bound to say that they are drawn with fidelity, and that the admirers of each Sabbath orator whose mental lineaments are placed before us will easily recognise the prominent features of the original. Although brief, they evince discrimination and talent; a fluent style being one of their chief recommendations, not much space is devoted to each. The writer only reviews the most striking characteristics, and his sympathies are manifestly with those who display most liberal and manly tendencies in their religious expositions."--_Sunday Times_.

"What Mr Francis did some few years since for the parliamentary orators of the age, Mr Ritchie has in the volume before us effected for the pulpit orators of the day. In brief but graphic delineations, he gives daguerreotypes, as it were, of the living manners of the chief popular preachers of various Christian denominations."--_The Church and State Gazette_.

"This is a second edition of Mr Ritchie's smart little sketches taken from the life of the most noted metropolitan preachers. The outline is bold, rather than minute and diffuse; now and then character is seized with remarkable fidelity; whilst the genial spirit which generally pervades the volume takes from occasional passages approaching censure anything like the sting of bitterness. There is scarcely a page that does not give the reader faith in the sincerity of the writer."--_Manchester Examiner and Times_.

"His sketches are characterized by a boldness, freedom, and vigour, which are rarely to be met with in works of that class. He is no hero-worshipper, but he shows that he has a keen appreciation of the higher forms of pulpit eloquence." _The People_.

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LONDON: WILLIAM TWEEDIE, 337, STRAND.

Footnotes:

{194} The Chelsea vestry complained of Cremorne, because it injured the property in the neighbourhood;--the defence was, that Mr Simpson had spent 30,000 pounds or 40,000 pounds upon it; that he had given 1200 pounds to the Wellington fund, and 300 pounds--the profits of one night's entertainment--to the fund for the relief of the victims of the Indian mutiny.