"But when one sees the entire satisfaction there is here with so ugly and revolting a state of things, and the inability people have to conceive the inconvenience of it... I am driven to speculate.... Is insanity excessively rare here, so that outrages, if they do occur, are naturally very few? or is the insanity... always of the imbecile kind? Or is insanity, at its worst, mollified by the respectful treatment which it meets, as vicious horses by kindness? "... Here is a people without lunatic asylums. Well, their lunatics are few or harmless; what a comfortable coincidence! If insanity among _us_ is caused by strong passions in one class and by intoxication in another, while the Turkish populations are nearly free from both... it implies a higher average morality.... Add to this there are no abandoned women here." Five months after the first attack of fever Newman was taken ill of a far worse one, which gave a great shock to his nervous system. He was in real danger of losing his life this time, possibly because, Dr. Cronin being absent, there was no one to treat him. He suffered, too, greatly from continual sleeplessness. When he was recovering, Dr. Cronin, who by now had returned, ordered horse exercise for him, and Mr. Parnell very generously bought a horse for him. In December, 1831, Mr. and Mrs. Parnell [Footnote: Mr. Parnell meant to have been married to Miss Cronin at Bordeaux, but this was found to be impossible, so he was obliged to wait till they reached Aleppo, where the ceremony took place in the early part of the year 1831.] went to Ladakîa to help Mr. Hamilton, whose health had more or less broken down, secure a vessel to take him to France _en route_ for England. He determined to see him safely on board. Mrs. Parnell also insisted on coming with her husband. But the travelling was rough, and she had had a bad fall from her ass, and besides had been ill and had no doctor at hand. Mr. Hamilton went away in the ship, but Mrs. Parnell became more and more weak, until at last she died. Immediately on hearing of her death. Dr. Cronin set out, full of sorrow at the loss of his sister, to see if he could be of any help to Mr. Parnell. Newman writes:-- "The brother and mother here are so deeply afflicted, that I ask: What does the noble-hearted bridegroom suffer, but so lately a bridegroom? "I am astounded at the reverse. Two months back she was hanging over my pillow weeping and kissing me as a dying man; now am I in youthful vigour, and she is in her grave. "What a meek and quiet spirit was she, active to laboriousness, though refined in person. Affectionate she was, very dear to me also, but unspeakable is the loss to others. This is the third wife taken from those whom I desired as comrades: one died in Dublin, one in Bagdad, now one in Ladakîa....