“It's a hopeless job,” grumbled Blueskin, “and harm will come of it. What are you to do with a mad mother at a time when you need all your wits to take care of yourself?” “Don't concern yourself further about me,” returned Jack. “Once for all, I shall go.” “Won't you take me?” “No; you must await my return here.” “Then I must wait a long time,” grumbled Blueskin. “You'll never return.” “We shall see,” replied Jack. “But, if I should _not_ return, take this purse to Edgeworth Bess. You'll find her at Black Mary's Hole.” And, having partaken of a hasty breakfast, he set out. Taking his way along East Smithfield, mounting Little Tower-hill, and threading the Minories and Hounsditch, he arrived without accident or molestation, at Moorfields. Old Bethlehem, or Bedlam,--every trace of which has been swept away, and the hospital for lunatics removed to Saint George's Field,--was a vast and magnificent structure. Erected in Moorfields in 1675, upon the model of the Tuileries, it is said that Louis the Fourteenth was so incensed at the insult offered to his palace, that he had a counterpart of St. James's built for offices of the meanest description. The size and grandeur of the edifice, indeed, drew down the ridicule of several of the wits of the age: by one of whom--the facetious Tom Brown--it was said, “Bedlam is a pleasant place, and abounds with amusements;--the first of which is the building, so stately a fabric for persons wholly insensible of the beauty and use of it: the outside being a perfect mockery of the inside, and admitting of two amusing queries,--Whether the persons that ordered the building of it, or those that inhabit it, were the maddest? and, whether the name and thing be not as disagreeable as harp and harrow.” By another--the no less facetious Ned Ward--it was termed, “A costly college for a crack-brained society, raised in a mad age, when the chiefs of the city were in a great danger of losing their senses, and so contrived it the more noble for their own reception; or they would never have flung away so much money to so foolish a purpose.” The cost of the building exceeded seventeen thousand pounds. However the taste of the architecture may be questioned, which was the formal French style of the period, the general effect was imposing. Including the wings, it presented a frontage of five hundred and forty feet. Each wing had a small cupola; and, in the centre of the pile rose a larger dome, surmounted by a gilded ball and vane. The asylum was approached by a broad gravel walk, leading through a garden edged on either side by a stone balustrade, and shaded by tufted trees. A wide terrace then led to large iron gates,' over which were placed the two celebrated figures of Raving and Melancholy Madness, executed by the elder Cibber, and commemorated by Pope in the Dunciad, in the well-known lines:--