and confusion summoned three physicians, and the usual remedies were prescribed and administered. The patient, however, grew worse and worse every minute, until at length his son came home with his father's waistcoat dangling about him. The mystery was instantly unfolded, and the patient being relieved from his imaginary apprehensions, dismissed his physicians, and was restored to health. The philosophy of mind is a study of peculiar interest, and after all our powers of research are exhausted, numerous phenomena will remain inexplicable. Indeed our mental faculties are continually overwhelmed with things inexplicable. We too often embrace for substantial truths mere phantoms, which vanish into air, and leave the mind to deplore its own imbecility. While superstition weakens our moral virtues, and the influence of imagination deludes our intellectual powers, the passion of fear has a pernicious and even a hazardous tendency. It is the passion, which most of all others, exerts its effects directly on the heart; on some occasions, it produces instant death, and in numerous instances, it lays a foundation for a chronic disease of that vital organ, which, after a long duration of distressing complaints, has a fatal termination. Not long since, an instance was published, of a child having died of a disease of the heart, in consequence of a fright received by being thrown upwards and caught in its fall for amusement. Few persons are aware of the extreme danger of sudden fright on timid minds. The most melancholy consequences have on some occasions resulted from stratagems with effigies, representing apparitions for innocent and momentary amusement. Instances are not wanting of a total loss of intellect during life, from such inexcusable folly. Parents and nurses should carefully avoid imbuing the minds of children with idle stories of ghosts and apparitions. The following facts, selected from numerous others, will illustrate the effects of terror on the mind. In a poor-house in Haerlem, a girl was seized with a convulsive disorder, which returned in regular paroxysms; not long after, another was taken, and others in succession, till all the boys and girls in the house were affected in a similar manner. The medical prescriptions failed to perform a cure. At length the celebrated Dr Boerhaave, ascribing the occurrences to the habit of imitation, ordered several furnaces to be placed in the chamber. Over the burning coals a number of crooked irons were laid, and the doctor ordered his attendants to burn the arm of the first child, who should be seized in a fit, even to the bone. This alarming remedy produced the desired effect; their imagination was overpowered by the force of fear, and not a case of the kind again occurred. In a family of six children, one of them was afflicted with convulsive affections; all the others exhibited the symptoms of the same disorder, by imitation. No remedy could remove