[D] Lord Byron, in his travels, found in the library at Ferrara the letters of Tasso, and saw the cell in the hospital at St. Ann's, where Tasso was confined. His enemies charged him with insanity, and threw him into this prison. The manner of treating insane persons in the Old World has been awfully cruel, so far as history gives any clue to the subject. Byron's Lament of Tasso is, no doubt, correct; but this is no reason why in this enlightened age, in a Christian country like ours, that lunatics should be treated as you would treat a mad dog or mad bear. “Long years of outrage, calumny and wrong; Imputed madness, prison'd solitude, And the mind's canker in its savage mood, When the impatient thirst of light and air Parches the heart; and the abhorred grate, Marring the sunbeams with its hideous shade, Works through the throbbing eyeball to the brain, With a hot sense of heaviness and pain; And bare, at once, captivity displayed, Stands scoffing through the never-opened gate, Which nothing through its bars admits save day And tasteless food, which I have eat alone, Till its unsocial bitterness is gone; And I can banquet like a beast of prey, Sullen and lonely, couching in the cave, Which is my lair, and it may be—my grave. All this hath somewhat worn me, and may wear, But must be borne. I stoop not to despair; For I have battled with mine agony, And made me wings wherewith to overfly The narrow circus of my dungeon wall. I weep and inly bleed, With this last bruise upon a broken reed. What is left me now? For I have anguish yet to bear—and how? I know not that, but in the innate force Of my own spirits shall be found resource. I have not sunk, for I had no remorse, Nor cause for such—they called me mad—and why? Oh, my judges! will not you reply? Above me, hark! the long and maniac cry, Of minds and bodies in captivity, And hark! the lash and the increasing howl, And the half inarticulate blasphemy! There be some here with worse than frenzy foul, Some who do still goad on the o'er labored mind, And dim the little light that's left behind, With needless torture, as their tyrant will Is wound up to the lust of doing ill; With these, and with their victims, am I classed, 'Mid sounds and sights like these, long years have passed. 'Mid sights and sounds like these my life may close; So let it be—for then I shall repose.