An architect, Mr. Stark, in visiting British asylums, when engaged in preparing plans for the Glasgow Asylum, came to the Retreat. He thus speaks in his "Remarks on the Construction and Management of Lunatic Asylums": "In some asylums which I have visited, chains are affixed to every table and to every bed-post; in others, they are not to be found within the walls.... At the Retreat they sometimes have patients brought to them frantic and in irons, whom they at once release, and by mild arguments and gentle arts reduce almost immediately to obedience and orderly behaviour. A great deal of delicacy appears in the attentions paid to the smaller feelings of the patients. The iron bars which guarded the windows have been avoided, and neat iron sashes, having all the appearance of wooden ones, have been substituted in their places; and when I visited them, the managers were occupied in contriving how to get rid of the bolts with which the patients are shut up at night, on account of their harsh, ungrateful sound, and of their communicating to the asylum somewhat of the air and character of a prison. The effects of such attentions, both on the happiness of the patients and the discipline of the institution, are more important than may at first view be imagined. Attachment to the place and to the managers, and an air of comfort and of contentment, rarely exhibited within the precincts of such establishments, are consequences easily discovered in the general demeanour of the patients." "It is a government," Stark also observes, "of humanity and of consummate skill, and requires no aid from the arm of violence and the exertions of brutal force."[121] But Stark himself, strange to say, is careful not to commit himself to the total abolition of chains, adopted at the Retreat.