How often do we see in society, and during the intercourse of private friendship, individuals complaining of the severest mental sufferings, the effect of morbid alterations of feeling almost in every respect similar to insanity, dependent upon the same causes, manifesting the same symptoms, and removed by the same remedial agents. How are these mental ailments treated? The poor sufferer is perhaps smiled at; he is considered to be fanciful, and no regard is paid to the cerebral affection. The disease is allowed to advance until other faculties of the mind are implicated, and then the mental alienation exhibits itself so unequivocally that no one doubts its existence. The success of the mental treatment of suicide will be mainly dependent on our paying strict attention to those apparently trifling alterations of temper and disposition, those deviations from the usual mode of thinking and acting, which so often predicate the presence of the incipient stage of insanity. An invincible love of solitude exhibited in a patient considered as labouring under an hypochondriacal affection, and who, when induced to converse, complains of being constantly pestered with one or two trains of ideas from which he cannot for a moment escape, although his efforts are great and unremitting, let his friends beware. These changes are, however, but rarely noticed, until some alarming event causes every friend to lament the want of timely attention. Occupation is an infallible specific for many of the imaginary and real ills of life. In cases where the mind is sinking under the influence of its own weight, and the fancy is allowed to dwell uninterruptedly on the ideas of its own creation, until the individual believes himself to stand apart from all the world, the very personification of human misery and wretchedness, the physician can recommend no better remedy than constant and steady occupation for the mind and body. Burton concludes his able work on Melancholy with this valuable piece of advice:—“Be not solitary; be not idle.” Dr. Reid recommended a patient, labouring under great mental depression, to engage in the composition of a novel, which, during the time he was occupied in the task, effected much good. By interesting himself in the distresses of fictitious beings, he diverted his attention from sufferings which were no less the offspring of the imagination.