“What a dreadful picture of human wretchedness the hypochondriac at Wiesbaden presents! He is sombre, thoughtful, or absent, in the midst of a laughing world. For ever brooding over his fate, his disease absorbs the whole of his attention. He disdains even the most trifling conversation with his fellow-creatures, and flies from those ephemeral acquaintances which are so easily formed at watering-places, exactly because one cares little how soon after they are forgotten. In fact, he would feel himself alone in the world, and never concern himself about those around him, did he not envy their healthy looks, their firmer muscles, and their sounder stomachs, which can sustain an indigestion with impunity!” There are a great many others, besides hypochondriacs, who are destined to feel the melancholy effects of blighted hopes in these last resorts of suffering—and who turn their weary steps homewards, without the cheering expectations that gilded their journey to a foreign land! But is there no risk of receiving, in exchange for dear-bought health, a moral contagion that poisons the springs of life, and saps the foundation of every virtue? Beneath the gilded domes of that splendid mansion—that palace of Plutus—that CURSAAL, or _Curst Hell_—the dæmons of play exhibit their piles of glittering ore—those “irritamenta malorum— “From night till morn, from morn till dewy eve,” familiarizing the uninitiated eye to scenes of desperate speculation—imbuing the soul with the wicked thirst of gold unjustly acquired—of plunder, without fear of punishment—of robbery, without danger of the gallows! The atmosphere of this Pandemonium—for the devils are in legions here—is too infectious to be long resisted. The open manner in which the vice is practised by day, and by night—in the presence of multitudes of all ages, nations, and both sexes—on the sabbath of the Lord, as well as on the day of work—this legalization, not merely permission of a violation of morality, religion, and social order, which, in England, must skulk in holes and corners—the kind of social heroism with which the most destructive vicissitudes of fortune are borne by some of the hardened haunters of these splendid hells—these and various other circumstances combine to mask the hideous mien of the monster, and strip the crime itself of half its horrors, till, by daily presentation, it becomes at length endurable without terror, and embraced without remorse! The neophyte has no sooner wound up his courage to the staking of his piece of gold, than the spell of security is broken—the charm of serenity is dissolved—the flood-gate of the passions is thrown open—the “_auri sacra fames_” takes possession of the soul—and the dæmon of the night enrols one more name on the list of his victims!