frame of mind, and especially by exciting a sense of shame: thus those affected are under the control of any sensible preacher, who knows how to “administer to a mind diseased,” and to expose the folly of voluntarily yielding to a sympathy so easily resisted, or of inviting such attacks by affectation. An intelligent and pious minister of Shetland informed the physician, who gives an account of this disorder as an eye-witness, that being considerably annoyed, on his first introduction into the country, by these paroxysms, whereby the devotions of the church were much impeded, he obviated their repetition by assuring his parishioners, that no treatment was more effectual than immersion in cold water; and as his kirk was fortunately contiguous to a freshwater lake, he gave notice that attendants should be at hand, during divine service, to ensure the proper means of cure. The sequel need scarcely be told. The fear of being carried out of the church, and into the water, acted like a charm; not a single Naiad was made, and the worthy minister, for many years, had reason to boast of one of the best regulated congregations in Shetland. As the physician above alluded to was attending divine service in the kirk of Baliasta, on the Isle of Unst, a female shriek, the indication of a convulsion fit, was heard; the minister, Mr. Ingram, of Fetlar, very properly stopped his discourse, until the disturber was removed; and, after advising all those who thought they might be similarly affected, to leave the church, he gave out, in the meantime, a psalm. The congregation was thus preserved from further interruption; yet the effect of sympathy was not prevented, for as the narrator of the account was leaving the church, he saw several females writhing and tossing about their arms on the green grass, who durst not, for fear of a censure from the pulpit, exhibit themselves after this manner within the sacred walls of the kirk[329]. In the production of this disorder, which no doubt still exists, fanaticism certainly had a smaller share than the irritable state of women out of health, who only needed excitement, no matter of what kind, to throw them into the prevailing nervous paroxysms. When, however, that powerful cause of nervous disorders takes the lead, we find far more remarkable symptoms developed, and it then depends on the mental condition of the people among whom they appear, whether in their spread, they shall take a narrow or an extended range—whether confined to some small knot of zealots they are to vanish without a trace, or whether they are to attain even historical importance.