“The English,” says Montesquieu, “frequently destroy themselves without any apparent cause to determine them to such an act, and even in the midst of prosperity. Among the Romans, suicide was the effect of education; it depended upon their customs and manner of thinking: with the English, it is the effect of disease, and depending upon the physical condition of the system.” A young man, twenty-two years of age, was intended by his parents for the church. He disliked the profession exceedingly, and absolutely refused to take orders. For this act, at once of integrity and disobedience, he was forced to quit his father’s house, and to exert his inexperienced energies for a precarious subsistence. He turned his thoughts to several different employments; and, at length, he went to reside with a family, where he was treated with great kindness, and where he appeared to enjoy a degree of tranquillity. His enjoyment, however, was not of long continuance, for his imagination was assailed by gloomy and distressing reflections. His life became more and more burdensome to him, and he considered by what method he should put an end to it. He one day formed the resolution of precipitating himself from the top of the house, but his courage failed him, and the execution of the project was postponed. Some days after, he took up a pistol with the same design of self-destruction. His perplexities and terrors returned. A friend of this unhappy youth called upon Pinel one day to inform him of the projected tragedy. Every means of prevention were adopted that prudence could suggest, but the most pressing solicitations and friendly remonstrances were in vain. The propensity to suicide unceasingly haunted him, and he precipitately quitted the family from whom he had experienced so many proofs of friendship and attachment. Financial considerations prohibited the suggestion of a distant voyage or a change of climate. He was therefore advised, as the best substitute, some constant and laborious employment. The young melancholic, sensibly alive to the horror of his situation, entered fully into Pinel’s views, and procured an engagement at Bled Harbour, where he mingled with the other labourers with a full determination to deserve his stipulated wages. But, completely fatigued and exhausted by the exertion of the first two days of his engagement, he was obliged to have recourse to some other expedient. He entered into the employment of a master-mason, in the neighbourhood of Paris, to whom his services were peculiarly acceptable, as he devoted his leisure hours to the instruction of an only son. No situation, apparently, could have been more suitable to his case than one of this kind, admitting of alternate mental and bodily exercise. Wholesome food, comfortable lodgings, and every attention due to misfortune, seemed rather to aggravate than to divert his gloomy propensities. After the expiration of a fortnight,