With no less beauty than truth has the author of Rasselas depicted the insanity of the astronomer as gradually declining under the sanative influence of society and mental gratification. The sage confesses, that since he has mixed in the gay scenes of life, and divided his hours by a succession of amusements, he found the notion of his influence over the skies gradually fade away, and began to trust less to an opinion which he could never prove to others, and which he now found subject to variations from causes in which reason had no part. “If,” says he, “I am accidentally left alone for a few hours, my inveterate persuasion rushes upon my soul, and my thoughts are chained down by an uncontrollable violence; but they are soon disentangled by the prince’s conversation, and are instantaneously released by the entrance of Pekuah. I am like a man habitually afraid of spectres, who is set at ease by a lamp, and wonders at the dread which harassed him in the dark.” It is difficult to lay down general rules for the treatment of particular cases of melancholia with a tendency to suicide. Travelling, agreeable society, works of light literature, should be had recourse to, in order to dispel all gloomy apprehensions from the mind. In persons predisposed to insanity, or who manifest some slight indication of disease, how important it is to endeavour to call into exercise the higher faculties of the mind,—the judgment and reasoning powers,—and thus preserve the intellectual faculties in a healthy state of equilibrium. There is much wisdom in Lord Bacon’s advice, that “if a man’s wits be wandering, he should study the mathematics.” The patient should be taught to derive a pleasure from the contemplation of those objects that afford variety, and that are always within his reach. A beneficent Creator has wisely placed around us endless sources of the purest and most elevating enjoyments. In a ratio to our intellectual attainments, so are we enabled to derive pleasure from circumstances that appear trifling and foolish to others. Mungo Park could, in the solitude of an African desert, when exposed to the most distressing circumstances, derive a most exquisite pleasure from the sight of a small flower. How fully can we enter into the feelings of the man who, after being prostrated to the earth by an accumulation of worldly disappointments, yet spoke in a tone of noble triumph at his having retained, amidst the wreck of all his hopes, a perception of the beauties of nature! “I care not, Fortune, what you me deny;— You cannot rob me of free Nature’s grace; You cannot shut the windows of the sky, Through which Aurora shews her bright’ning face; You cannot bar my constant feet to trace The woods and lawns by living stream at eve: Let health my nerves and finer fibres brace, And I these toys to the great children leave: Of fancy, reason, virtue, nought can me bereave.”