The dietary in public asylums is ample, and the quality excellent. Hanwell may, perhaps, be considered the model establishment in this respect. It is the joke of the other asylums, that one man has been regaled there daily for years with chicken and wine. Even the fancies of the patients are now and then gratified at some expense. There is an old lady in Hanwell who believes that the whole establishment is her private property; and, on one occasion, she complained to the medical superintendent that, notwithstanding all the expense she was at to keep up the grounds and forcing-houses, she never could get any grapes. The next day she was presented with a bunch, which had been purchased to appease her repinings. This humouring method of treatment, as it is called in other asylums, is much patronized by the matron, a person who seems to enjoy as much power as the medical officers. In her report for 1856 she thus speaks of a patient who died in the course of last year:-- "She had been employed many years in the laundry, and always imagined she was to be removed elsewhere--that on Monday morning a waggon would call at the gate for herself and her property. Accordingly, every Monday morning throughout the year, at 10 o'clock, she was accompanied to the gate, dressed with a coloured handkerchief pinned fancifully over her cap instead of a bonnet, and carrying a small parcel (_her property_) of the most heterogeneous contents--thimbles, ends of tape, polished bones, pebbles, pieces of smooth coal, &c. The waggon was never found to be in waiting, and Mary, without evincing any disappointment, walked cheerfully back to the laundry, telling the superintendent that 'The waggon would be sure to come next Monday, but that she need not lose time, so she would work all this week.'" In many asylums this method of treatment is thought calculated to feed the original delusion; but here, again, the judgment of the physician ought alone to determine the course to be taken in each individual case. In patients labouring under violent excitement, to oppose an hallucination, however absurd, would add fuel to the fire. Again, in a chronic case like that of the laundry-maid, the harmless fancy of the poor creature might not only be indulged in with impunity, but served to renew week by week her stock of cheerfulness.