ference to the circumstances of his age, his country, and even of his personal history. In his version, in like manner, of Orosius's Ancient History and Geography, he inserts from his own pen a sketch of the German nations, as well as an account of a voyage towards the North Pole made by a Norwegian navigator, from whom he had himself received the details. His greatest work is his translation of Bede's Ecclesiastical History, a truly splendid monument of his literary zeal and industry. A greater still would have been the complete version of the Scriptures, which some writers say he executed; but it is by no means clearly ascertained that he really translated the whole Bible, or even any considerable portion of it. * We may well wonder how the necessary leisure for all these literary exertions could be found by a monarch who, in the course of not a very long life, is recorded to have fought fifty-six battles; and who, even when no longer engaged among the ruder troubles of war, had so many public cares to occupy his time and thoughts. To add to all the other disadvantages he had to struggle with, he is stated to have been attacked, ere he had completed his twentieth year, with an agonizing internal disease, vhich, although it did not incapacitate him from the performance of any of his royal functions, tormented him so unremittingly as hardly to leave him an entire day's exemption from misery during the remainder of his life; or if it ever, to use the affecting language of Asser, was through the mercy of God withdrawn from him for a day, or a night, or even a single hour, it would yet continue to make him wretched by the thought of the excruciating distress he would have to suffer when it returned. Alfred, who was, if ever any one was, literally the Father of his country, presiding over and directing the whole management of affairs, almost as if the people had been indeed his family, accomplished what he did chiefly by the golden rule of doing everything at its own time. The method which he took, in the want of a better time-piece, to measure the flight of the hours by means of graduated wax candles, inclosed in lanthorns to protect them from the wind, is well known. He usually divided the day and night, we are told, into three portions, of eight hours each the first of which he devoted to religious meditation and study, the second to public affairs, and the third to rest and necessary refreshment. Alfred died, as is generally stated, on the 26th of October, 901; but some authorities place his decease a year, and some two years earlier. By his wife Elswitha he had three sons, the second of whom, Edward, succeeded him on the throne -the eldest having died in his father's life-time -and three daughters. England has had no monarch, or patriot, of whom she had more reason to be proud, nor indeed does the history of any nation record a more perfect character, than this Anglo-Saxon sovereign. LORETAN MARYANSKI. From the New Monthly Magazine. Or all the strange situations it has been the lot of my eventful youth to be placed in, the most remarkable was the temporary care of a private asylum for the insane. In the course of my medical studies I had frequently been thrown into society with a young gentleman, nephew to the proprietor of an estab lishment of the kind in question, in which he acted sassistant or clerk. Wes e soon formed an intimacy, and at length, when a necessity arose that he should visit some near relations in the North of Ireland, he requested me to favour him by performing his duty in the house for a week or two during his absence. As it was not inconvenient to me at the time, and I was very desirous to see the mode of treatment practised by the proprietor, who, though not by profession a medical man, had no indifferent reputation in his peculiar line, I was very glad to take advantage of the offer, and soon found myself at the establishment. I was particular to make inquiry of my friend with regard to the nature of the cases to be under my care, and was informed that the house was unusually empty at the time, there not being more than fifteen patients in it, and that few of the cases were possessed of much interest, with the exception of one, whose peculiarities he forthwith proceeded to explain to me. "The individual," said be, “is a young Pole, by name Loretan Maryanski, a person of very high talent; and his hallucination is, that on the Pythagorean principle, his body is animated by no less a soul than that of the celebrated hero Kosciusko. So long as you avoid interference with this idea you will find him a most intelligent and accomplished young fellow-a gentleman in every respect. He was a student of medicine in London for some years; in fact he has not been many months with us, and strange enough he devoted all along very much attention to the study of the mental disorders, upon which subject you will find his information nearly unimpeachable. He believes that he is at present, as a pupil, prosecuting his studies of that class of disease in our asylum, and devotes much attention to all the cases, whilst his care and humanity to the sufferers is unremitting. "His father was a nobleman of one of the lesser grades in Lithuania, I believe, who, having taken an energetic part in the last insurrection, found it necessary to flee to England, and along with others, in similar circumstances, to become a pensioner on the bounty of our countrymen. By this means, and also from a tolerable income he could make by acting as foreign clerk to an extensive mercantile house, and by employing his spare hours in teaching German and French, he has been enabled to rear a family in comfort, and also to educate his eldest son for the medical profession. "Loretan was a good clasical scholar before he The sum of thirteen peace half-penny is called was brought to England, and was acquainted with hangman's wages, because the fee of the execu-German, French, and English. The last he speaks tioner used to be a Scottish mark, or thirten pence and the third of a penny. • See Hearne's notes upon Epelman, p. 213. familiar with almost all its idioms, a facility in with very little foreign accent, and is moreover acquiring which, as well as the accent, is, I am informed, a peculiar property of his countrymen, beyond the people of any other continental nation. As a student he was most devoted, giving his great talents completely to his tasks, nor ever allowing the usual temptations of youth to draw him for a moment from them. I have often thought that when a man of active and original intellect has never been allowed-by constraint, whether of others, or self-imposed-to mingle with society, but has, from his earliest experience, associated with books, and not with men (if you will allow me the expression,)—when in addition he has the strong motives of emulation and knowledge of his own powers, or the stronger still of necessity, to force him to his solitary studies-he creates around him a strange world-book-derived-which is quite different from that of ordinary life, and really constitutes a kind of insanity. The idea of madness from much learning would appear to have been a prevalent one, from the days of the apostle Paul to our own; and when you reflect how many of the most noble minds of this age have sunk, and been extinguished in imbecility and mania, you will probably have a clearer view than otherwise, as well of my precise drift in the argument, as of the case of my poor friend Maryanski. and was so violent as to require the whirling chair* hallucinations of any patient. system. asylum; takes reports, keeps the journal, looks after the dieting, and affects to have a sharp eye all these duties yourself, though you will find him over the keepers. Of course you will attend to of amazing value to you in a variety of ways. You must take care that no historical work of any kind, come where they can possibly be seen by him. no atlas, globes, nor any newspapers or periodicals, The time not occupied with his fancied duties from my uncle's library, all regarding or bearing you will find him devote to the perusal of books upon his own malady, such as Abercromby, Pinel, Reports of Dr. Hibbert's book, and a host of others; or to the study of botany, which he prosecutes with very great ardour. He is allowed to go about the fields as often as he chooses, but Jackson, the keeper always accompanies him, on the pretext of carrying his plant-case, which we have purposely had made very clumsy and inconvenient, as if to require such attendance. "You will find he does clerk's business in the "I should state to you that you must never alone with him; for if you attend to the above betray the slightest evidence of timorousnes when instructions he is altogether harmless, and, moreover, a most agreeable companion; whilst the least appearance of such a feeling gives him great uneasi "His disorder had long been suspected of overstepping the bounds of eccentricity. He began to talk mysteriously of the possibility of holding intercourse with superior beings, to mention the old doctrine of Rosicrucianism with approbation, and seriously express his belief in the theory of the transmigration of souls. At length his hallucination took form, and he coolly and frequently enough announced himself to be the dead hero revived. These ideas his fellow-students received at first with ridicule, till at length it proved somewhat more than a joke to one. Several of them were together in a bookseller's shop, which they were in the habit of frequenting. He was among them, and found means, in the course of conversation on a German physiological work, to introduce his favorite notion, narrating several interesting anecdotes of himself when Kosciusko, which I am afraidness; for madmen, however strong may be their own are not to be found recorded in any life of that personage. But one of the students, more waggish than wise, ventured to tell him that he too had recollections of a similar kind, having in a former state of existance actually been the celebrated Marshal Suwarrow. The word had hardly left his lips, when the Pole, in a burst of frenzy that was plainly maniacal, seized a ponderous beam of iron, the bar used to fix the window-shutters at night, and heaving it aloft, brought it down with his whole strength in the direction of the unlucky jester's crown, accompanying the act with a wild shriek, that speedily collected a crowd round the door. Had the blow reached its aim, it would undoubtedly have sent the spirit of the Russian in quest of a less jocular tabernacle. As it was, the poor fellow had just time to start to one side, when the iron descended upon him; his arm, which he had instinctively thrown up, received it, and both bones were fractured. "After this he went beyond all bounds, and in a few days, on the authority of the coroner, he was certified insane, and placed by his friends under our charge. think of them, and any indication of the kind on notions, have always a suspicion about what people your part will make him very despondent, and probably for a considerable time divert him from the salutary pursuits he is at present so much like with him in any discussion, you will always engrossed with. You may be as obstinate as you find his manner marked by good-humour and of his views on a multitude of subjects, you will courtesy, whilst at the clear and masterly nature be struck with surprise. "One of his prime accomplishments, I had almost forgot to say, is drawing. Some of his productions in this way are admirable. They appear so to me, though I must confess I have no particular taste in the art, but I have heard them praised even more highly by others whose opinion is not so questionable." Such was the account I received of this young This machine, frequently used in the violent fits of maniacs consists of a chair fixed upon a pivot, and so conmade to revolve with great rapidity. Its calming effect structed that with the unfortunate creature in it, it can be upon patients is complete at the time, but whether perma "Since then he has only had one paroxysm,nently useful must be questionable. Its use has been with which indeed happened closely after his arrival, rare exceptions confined to the Continental Asylums, and even from these it is now nearly abolished. man, and my experience shortly convinced me of its correctness. His appearance was somewhat remarkable. He was what is called a fine-looking man, and had about him that indescribable cast of features and gestures by which it is almost always possible to know a foreigner. His eyes especially, large, prominent and of a blueish gray colour, darted rapidly from one direction to another, and their glance had that peculiar expression whereby some think that they can detect, at the first look, an insane person, or one subject to epilepsy. His voice was very sweet in its sound, and the slight foreign accent lent it a degree of interest that rendered him a most pleasing companion to discourse with. In talent and information I found him to be indeed all that my friend had promised, and very soon got much attached to him; whilst the reflection that this fine intellect was unsound, and profitless to himself or his fellow-creatures, added a feeling of melancholy to the regret I felt for him. He dressed plainly, but had a taste for jewellery and for fine linen. He was fond of smoking, too, a habit he had acquired long before his illness, and of which those under whose treatment he was, had thought it advisable to permit his continuance. He used Turkish tobacco, in a long pipe of straight stick, with the bark on, which had a red clay bowl at one end, and a gilded amber mouth-piece at the other. I have since seen these in common use in the eastern part of the Mediterranean, but it was quite novel to me at the time, and added to the strange and outlandish appearance of all the man. After I had been some days in the asylum, he used to come every evening to my apartment, generally with a book or portfolio under his arm, and we would smoke and drink coffee by ourselves for an hour or so, and talk over the contents of the volume. His very large collection, too, of sketches and water-colour drawings, was a fruitful source of pleasurable amusement to me on such occasions. They were certainly most masterly productions. A number were anatomical-chiefly copies of dissections of the nervous system; and these were executed with a cleaness and sharpness of outlime, and a correctness of form and colouring, that was indeed remarkable. I was particulaaly pleased with some drawings of the origin and distribution of the Trigeminus, or fifth pair. The reader, who is in any degree acquainted with physiology, will know what a difficult subject this is, whether for demonstration or copying on paper; yet to such minuteness had the dissection apparently been carried, and with such accuracy and taste had it been depicted, that I was perfectly delighted, and emphatically expressed my admiration and preference of them to all the others. "Yes," said he "they are the best-they were the last I ever did of that description. I was an enthusiast then for anatomy, especially physiological. I dissected eight hours out of the twentyfour for about two years, and when my other classes took up my time by day, I used to go at it by night. My grand subjects of investigation soon became the nervous system. I was incited and inspire 1 by the discoveries of Bell, Marshall, Hall, and others, and convinced I too could do something, gave so much of my mind to the study, that I regularly became unwell, and sometimes think there has been a strange confusion in my mind ever since." He said this with a look and tone so mournful, that I was much moved, and felt deeply for him. He paused awhile, then broke out suddenly, whilst his eyes flashed with strange lustre. "But what do you think D-, my toils were at length rewarded, and gloriously. A discovery arose before me, in comparison with which all the boasted ones of the most distinguished names are but as dust. I actually found out and now know what is the nervous influence-where it resideshow to detect it, separate it from the body, accumulate it, treasure it up apart, make it obedient to my commands. Then first did I know what mind is, and how it acts upon matter, and is again reacted on. Then did I first ascertain the immortality of the soul, and-most interesting of discoveries!-find out the origin and transmigration of the spirit that animates my own frame. "What do you think I came here for, but to render my knowledge complete, by watching in its deranged and unsound state that mind which I had so long and curiously studied in its perfect working? "In a year or two, when I have acquired a thorough intimacy with the subject in every possible point of view, and had time to digest and arrange the facts in my thoughts, I will bring out a work that will strike the world with wonder, as did the deeds of Columbus, and open up an entirely new field for the speculations of inge nious men. The benefit I shall have conferred upon mankind will be incalculable. Who then will dread death, when he knows that his spirit can never die—that this awful event is simple as the changing of a garment, and that by a method which I shall make public, when the body becomes no longer suited to him, he can choose another, in what rank or race best pleases him? Oh, the wretched absurdity of hereditary honours! Could men but know when they lick the dust before a creature to whom the chance of bodily birth has given power, what sort of spiritual origin it hath, they would hide themselves for very shame of their monstrous folly. Shakspeare talks of the base uses our clay may come to, and traces the dust of Cæsar till he finds it stopping a bung-hole. But look at yonder youthful duchess in her box at the opera, glittering with jewelsherself more dazzling in her beauty-the focus to which the beams from all eyes converge; the theme of all conversation-the idol of all worship. Whence came the soul, that at the command of the chief spirit, entered into her frame when it first took form? From the body of a negro, which was corrupted to death by a loathsome leprosy, whilst itself was debased by ignorance, slavery, and unbridled passions, till it could scarcely be known from the disgusting matter of which it had been the life. "When this bright discovery first opened upon me, and the transports of the joy attendant had subsided into the proud but calm consciousness of a mighty triumph, you can form no idea of the feelings with which I looked back upon the gropings of men whom the unenlightened call and honour by the name philosophers. When I thought of their dreams about Matter and Mind, Consciousness, Cause and Effect, and other stumbling-blocks, I could only admire with how little talent a man may acquire the name. How would they regard my great revelation, when I choose to make it? Would they treat me as they did Harvey? No they could not-they would be overwhelmed with the vastness of the new intellectual world that would be displayed before them, and when they were, through its means, enabled to discern the nature of the mighty spirit animating the body of the discoverer, and to know the deeds it has originated in the different bodies it has sojourned in, they would fall down and worship, knowing it to be as far above them as the chief spirit again has marked the distance between it and himself. "Would you know the manner in which this great discovery was made? It was terrible(Here he shuddered)-as must always be any breaking through the laws of nature, for such is to be considered the first consciousness a man's material senses have of the presence of an immaterial being. For about six months I had been tormenting my mind, speculating upon what could be the precise nature of that Influence Fluid, or whatever else the ignorant call it, of which the brain is the reservoir, and the nerves the channels-whether it was a mere property of matter, or separately existent-if the latter, whether it was perishable or eternal. Methought if I could establish their separate and independent being--then matter and spirit would be proved to be the only things that had existence; but matter, we already know, is indestructible-why should not spirit then be indestructible likewise. And then wherefore should the connexion of a portion of spirit with matter be only solitary and temporary? should it not rather be continual; and as the organized portion of matter ceases in time to be capable of the connexion, should not a new portion be provided, and should not the spirit, upon the breaking up of one connexion, immediately form another, and thus migrate from body to body, suffering to be lost none of its power of being useful? "Such is a specimen of the thoughts that filled my head, sleeping and waking, all the while I was endeavouring, by constant and most minute dissection, to gather facts whereon to build my hypotheses, and reading every book I could lay my hands upon, that bore in any degree upon the subject. I had a presentiment I should make some vast discovery, and grudged no labour nor expense which the most parsimonious living could enable me to afford. As the hospital dissectingroom was unsuitable for my pursuits, from the noise and continual interruption of young men, who appear to come to such places more as a lounge than for study, and also from the want of opportunity to dissect by night, I entered myself a pupil of Mr. P's private room. "This place was situated in Lane, Southwark, a dingy, disreputable hole, the unseemliness of which prevented the facilities for study which it afforded from being properly appreciated and taken advantage of. Only some of the very poorest students frequented it, though about a century ago, it was the best attended anatomical school in London. "The proprietor made no emolument from it, its sole use being to afford him the title anatomist, which was of course of infinite advantage to him in practice. He was the descendant of two generations of eminent medical men who had lectured there, ahd whose valuable museums of morbid preparations he inherited. To find your way to it, you turned from the lane up a dark covered passage for about fifty feet, then emerging into a kind of court, with blind walls all around, you saw before you a tall, dark building. The lower stories had been used formerly for a leather factory, but had been long since deserted, and were now quite ruinous and empty. The upper stories formed the school, approachable by a staircase behind, to get at which you had to go through another arched passage, as dark, but shorter than the first. mounting this, and entering within the wall of the building, you ascended two narrow staircases of wood, and traversed a long passage with two doors, the further of which opened into the dissectingroom, the nearer into the theatre or class-room. Immediately under these were two large rooms, the museum, which opened at the top of the first wooden staircase. Their walls were concealed by shelves, crowded with cylindrical crystal bottles, containing various portions and organs of the body of man, and of other animals, preserved in alcohol. Several of these were very ancient, and almost interesting, from the important phenomena of which they were the proofs or illustrations. After "In various cabinets, with glass fronts, were displayed bones varnished, preparations of the arteries, veins, and nerves-in short, the place had all the ghastly features of an anatomical museum, with the peculiar stillness, coldness, and strange earthy smell. The dissecting-room was an extensive hall, lighted up by two large windows in the roof. From the ceiling, which was very high, depended a couple of skeletons, one of which had the thumb of its hand fixed up to the nose in an attitude of derision, and the other had stuck between its teeth a short pipe, whilst one hand was made to hold a quizzing-glass to its empty socket. All round the dead walls were hung up drawings of various organs, plans of their action, preparations of legs, arms, &c., in the process of drying, and the leather and cloth gowns of the pupils; whilst, to complete the picture, fancy a couple of tables, each bearing the cast-off and decaying tenement of a spirit, opened up in its intricate machinery to the eye, like a watch denuded of its case. "Such was the scene in which I passed many a lonely night of hard and uninterrupted study, with no companion but my books, with a small voltaic battery and coil, and some other instruments and apparatus of my own construction, of which no man but myself understands the nature. "The place was plentifully supplied with light, the two windows taking up nearly the whole of the ceiling. In one of them I had fixed the reflector of a small solar microscope, with which I prosecuted my physiological investigations. "But the first step towards my grand discovery was the finding a substance which had power to harden the nervous matter to an infinitely greater degree than alcohol, alum, corrosive sublimate, or any other antiseptic previously known. "When my views began to open up more dis tinctly, I became apprehensive that my experiments and dissections might be watched; and during the day I came only at those hours when I knew the other pupils were engaged elsewhere. The night was my chosen time for labour. To facilitate my proceedings in this way, the proprietor allowed me to have gas-light to what extent I liked, and to keep the keys of the various doors of the rooms. "Night after night did I sit there, absorbed and rapt in my solitary study, my light visible to no human creature, and the only sound I heard being the dropping of a cinder from the fire, or the rattle of a mouse or rat among the bones in the glass-cases below. "Well, one day I was told by a young man, one of the pupils, that as he was to go up to some examination next day, he wished to sit up all night to study the bones. Of course I could not object, and that evening he came. "After we had smoked together for a little at the fire, he took his book and the bones, and began to pore silently upon them. I resumed my labour, and soon became so absorbed, as to be altogether unaware of his presence. I was 'dissecting on the side of the face, the branches of the fifth and seventh, where the moter twigs of the latter run into the sentient ones of the former -a fact into which an insight was essential to my progress. I was deeply engrossed with it for several hours. "At length, when it was between midnight and one o'clock (I knew the time from the cold feeling that always comes on one sitting up at that hour: if you have ever studied by night, you will know that there is no time when you feel so chilly, or when your fire, if you are inattentive to it, is so apt to go out, as this)-having been for a long time in a bent and cramped position, leaning over my task, I instinctively sat up erect, to relax my wearied muscles, and half absently looked out into the empty room. "What was my surprise to behold another being besides myself, standing on the opposite side of the table, and apparently scrutinizing my dissection with much interest. My first impression was, that the other student had left his own work, and come to look at mine; but on turning my head to satisfy myself, I saw him laid along, sound asleep, on a form before the fire. My eyes now returned, with unspeakable awe and terror, to the figure before me, and rooted to my seat, with my forceps in one hand, and my scalpel in the other, I sat gazing on it, holding my breath, whilst my hair stood up, and a cold shivering ran through my limbs. But judge of my amazement, when regarding it steadily, I saw its features to be identical in form and expression with those of the subject under my knife. "I could easily perceive this, for I had only dissected one side of the face, and the other half was untouched, the open glassy eye of the corpse being one in colour with that which sparkled with unearthly radiance in the head of the spectre. "Paralysed with fear, I remained unable to remove my sight from its countenance. It stood with one hand behind, and the other in its bosom. The features had an expression of much intelligence, but seem to have been wasted with continual distress, and wore a look of humiliation and Had hopelessness, apparently habitual to them. I met such a figure by day in the street, I should have taken it for an artisan out of employ-most likely a hand-loom weaver. Round the waist a white apron in appearance, was tied, which had been caught up and secured through the string to one side, leaving a triangular corner hanging down before. "The feelings which actuated it in this strange inspection, appeared to be not at all of a wrathful description; deep interest and curiosity were all that I could read in the look that was so fixedly bent upon my work. 66 Imagine the hour, the scene, the solitude, the silence, the ghastly remains that everywhere surrounded me! "I looked around into the dim corners of the large hall, with the dark gowns, grim fragments of mortality, and blood-coloured pictures, darkly visible on the walls. Then my eye travelled to the yawning mouth of the pitchy passage leading down to the museum, and away to the far distant lane. I turned my gaze aloft; there swung the two skeletons, both turned towards me, their caged ribs and sharp limb-bones distinctly lined and shaded, under the light of the simple jet of gas that, depending from the ceiling over my table, illuminated the place, and their grotesque attitude adding a diabolical mockery to the dread and disgust themselves inspired; like the effect German romancers seek to produce when they tell of wild bursts of demoniac laughter, marking the ratification of unhallowed compacts of mortals with the fiend. "A feeling of terror now possessed me, so strange and strong, that I can never express it in words. I wist not what to do-whether to address this unearthly visitant to rise and flee from its presence, or experiment with the view to ascertain whether it might not be a delusion of the eye. You perhaps may consider, and many others with you, that this last would have been the most rational proceeding. It is all very well for one so to think, but let him be placed in the circumstances, and how will he act? "Retreating backwards under the influence of overpowering fear, I went to where the other student lay asleep before the fire, and endeavoured to awake him-not with any view that he might witness the phenomenon of this breach of nature's laws, but solely from that master instinct that so urgently prompts us to seek the society of our own kind, when we deem that beings of another order are near us. "He was sound asleep, and when I shook him, replied by some strangely murmured words of a dream. If you ever have had the nightmare, and when some hideous monster pounced upon you, and you essayed to spring away for very life, found yourself unaccountably devoid of powers to stir, you will have had an analogous, though far from equal feeling to what I experienced, when I found that though this young man was with me in the body, his spirit was away in far distant scenes. There was now an idea of forsakeness, desolation, and defencelessness, mixed with the feelings of awe and terror-the sense of vague and undefinable, but dreadful anger which had previously filled my mind. I would have cried out; but had I power to scream, which I had not, for a tem |