The utmost precaution will not always insure safety, for patients considered quite harmless will now and then commit the most horrible acts. A black man, a butcher, who had been many years in an American asylum, and had never shown any violence, one night secreted a knife, and induced another patient to enter his cell. When his companion had lain down, he cut his throat, divided him into joints, and arranged the pieces round his cell as he had been accustomed to arrange his meat in his shop. He then offered his horrible wares to his fellow-lunatics, carrying such parts as they desired to those who were chained. The keeper, hearing the uproar, examined the cells, and found one man missing; upon inquiring of the black butcher if he had seen him, he calmly replied, "He had sold the last joint!" Even those who have apparently harmless delusions, will sometimes, if thwarted, commit unlooked-for atrocities. Not many years since, an inquisition was held before Mr. Commissioner Winslow upon a young gentleman who would travel considerable distances to see a windmill, and sit watching it for days. His friends, to put an end to his absurd propensity, removed to a place where there were no mills. The youth, to counteract the design, murdered a child in a wood, mangling his limbs in a terrible manner, in the hope that he should be transferred, as a punishment, to a situation whence a mill could be seen. Idleness is perhaps a greater curse to the majority of lunatics than to sane individuals. Occupation diverts the mind from its malady. Colney Hatch and Hanwell, from their populousness, and from the fact of their being filled principally by metropolitan lunatics, afford admirable examples of the new method of employing patients in the trades they have been accustomed to follow when in health. As the ranges of workshops at Colney Hatch are the most extensive, we will draw our description from that establishment. Of the male patients, only 245, out of an average of 514 in the house during the year 1855, were employed in labour at all, the remainder consisting of violent maniacs and those afflicted with paralysis, epilepsy, and idiocy, none of whom are capable of undertaking any work. Sixty-five persons were allotted to the gardens, grounds, and farms, leaving 180 to be distributed in the workshops and various offices of the asylum. The tailoring department is the most extensive. Upon the occasion of our visit, there were at least a score of cross-legged lunatics cutting out and making up grey dresses for the inmates, or repairing old clothing, their conduct being in no manner distinguishable from that of sane journeymen. The shoemakers numbered a dozen, every man handling his short knife. Those unaccustomed to lunatics will find it a nervous proceeding to thread their way among so many armed madmen, and will wish themselves well out of this apparently dangerous assembly. Yet, in truth, they are no more to be feared than any similar number of lucid