for it would be clear that the nearer humanity strove to attain towards divine perfection, the more it was retrograding towards a state inferior to that of the brute creation. A patient examination, however, of the question entirely negatives such a conclusion. Dr. Ray, of the United States, in taking the opposite view of the case, says:-- "If we duly consider the characteristics of our times, we shall there find abundant reason for the fact that insanity has been increasing at a rate unparalleled in any former period. In every successive step that has led to a higher degree of civilisation; in all the means and appliances for developing the mental resources of the race; in the ever-widening circle of objects calculated to influence desire, and impel to effort, we find so many additional agencies for tasking the mental energies, and thereby deranging the healthy equilibrium which binds the faculties together, and leads to an harmonious result. The press and the rostrum, the railway and the spinning-jenny, the steam engine and the telegraph, republican institutions and social organizations, are agencies more potent in preparing the mind for insanity than any or all of those vices and casualties which exert a more immediate and striking effect." Such is the burthen of the story of all those psychologists who believe that insanity is fast gaining upon us; but if "in the ever-widening circle of objects calculated to influence desire and impel to effort, we find so many additional agencies for tasking the mental energies, and thereby deranging the healthy equilibrium which binds the faculties together," it should appear that those classes of society which are in the van of civilization should be the chief sufferers. Bankers, great speculators, merchants, engineers, statesmen, philosophers and men of letters--those who work with the brain rather than with their hands,--should afford the largest proportion to the alleged increase of insanity. How does the matter really stand? In the Report of the Commissioners in Lunacy for the year 1847 we find the total number of private patients of the middle and upper classes then under confinement in private asylums, amounted to 4,649. Now, if we skip eight years, and refer to the Report of 1855, we find that there were only 4,557 patients under confinement, or about 96 less, notwithstanding the increase of population during that period. If we compare the number of pauper lunatics under confinement at these two different periods, we shall find a widely-different state of things; for in 1847 there were 9,654 in our public and private asylums, whilst in 1855 they numbered 15,822. In other words, our pauper lunatics would _appear_ to have increased 6,170 in eight years, or upwards of 64 per cent. It is this extraordinary increase of pauper lunatics in the county asylums which has frightened some psychologists from their propriety, and led them to