Mad musicians seem to be more mad than others; for Fodere gives us the following strange account of some of them. "Les plus grands musiciens ne reconnaissent souvent plus leurs instruments: l'un prenant son violon, que je lui avais mis dans les mains, pour un vase de nuit, et un autre prenant sa flute pour un sabre, et voulait m'en frapper." We, however, frequently meet with lunatics who, although they have no remembrance of the past circumstances of their life, recollect and perform airs which they had formerly played. Various well-authenticated cases lead us to suppose, that a sensibility to music long latent may be called into action by accidental circumstances. A case is on record of a countrywoman, twenty-eight years of age, who had never left her village, but was, by mere chance, present at a _fete_ where a concert was performed, and dancing to a full band afterwards followed. She was delighted with the novelty of the scene; but, the _fete_ concluded, she could not dismiss from her mind the impression the music had produced. Whether she was at her meals, her devotions, her daily occupation, or in her bed,--still, or moving about,--the airs she had heard, and in the succession in which they had been performed, were ever present to her recollection. To sleep she became a stranger,--every function became gradually deranged, and six short months terminated her existence, not having for one moment lost this strange sensation; and during this sad period, when any false note on the violin was purposely drawn, she would hold her head with both hands, and exclaim, "Oh! what a horrible note! it tears my brain!" Sir Henry Halford relates the case of a man in Yorkshire, who after severe misfortunes lost his senses, and was placed in a lunatic asylum. There, in a short time, the use of the violin gradually restored him to his intellects; so promptly, indeed, that six weeks after the experiment, on hearing the inmates of the establishment passing by, he said, "Good morning, gentlemen; I am quite well, and shall be most happy to accompany you."