The grounds are exceedingly well laid out, with careful attention to the principal object for which they are arranged, but without neglecting any of the beauty of which the spot is so capable. They have shade and flowers, distant views and sheltered seats, with pleasant walks, and even drives and rides, in all directions. The enclosure contains about sixty acres, to every part of which the patients who are well enough to walk about can be admitted with perfect safety.
In this park are situated two or three distinct lodges, which are found occasionally to be of the greatest utility, in cases where the most profound quiet is necessary, and yet where too strict confinement would be injurious. Indeed, it appears to me that the object principally kept in view throughout all the arrangements, is the power of keeping patients out of sight and hearing of each other till they are sufficiently advanced towards recovery to make it a real pleasure and advantage to associate together.
As soon as they reach this favourable stage of their convalescence, they mix with the family in very handsome rooms, where books, music, and a billiard-table assist them to pass the hours without ennui. Every patient has a separate sleeping-apartment, in none of which are the precautions necessary for their safety permitted to be visible. What would wear the appearance of iron bars in every other place of the kind that I have seen, are here made to look like very neat jalousies. Not a bolt or a bar is perceptible, nor any object whatever that might shock the spirit, if at any time a gleam of recovered intellect should return to visit it.
This cautious keeping out of sight of the sufferers everything that might awaken them to a sense of their own condition, or that of the other patients, appears to me to be the most peculiar feature of the discipline, and is evidently one of the objects most sedulously kept in view. Next to this I should place the system of inducing the male patients to exercise their limbs, and amuse their spirits, by working in the garden, at any undertaking, however bizarre and profitless, which can induce them to keep mind and body healthily employed. I know not if this has been systematically resorted to elsewhere; but the good sense of it is certainly very obvious, and the effect, as I was told, is found to be very generally beneficial; though it occasionally happens that some among them have fancied their dignity compromised by using a spade or a hoe,—and then some of the family join with them in the labour, to prove that it is merely a matter of amusement: in short, everything likely to cheer or soothe the spirits seems brought into use among them.
The ground close adjoining to the house is divided into many small well-enclosed gardens; the women's apartments opening to some, the men's to others of them. In several of these gardens I observed neat little tables, such as are used in the restaurans of Paris, with a clean cloth, and all necessary appointments, placed pleasantly and commodiously in the shade, at each of which was seated one person, who was served with a separate dinner, and with every appearance of comfort. Had I not known their condition, I should in many instances have thought the spectacle a very pleasing one.
M. Voisin walked through all parts of the establishment with us, and there appeared to exist a perfectly good understanding between him and his patients. Among many regulations, which all appeared excellent, he told me that the friends of his inmates were permitted at all times, and under all circumstances, to visit them without any restraint whatever: an arrangement which can only be productive of confidence and advantage to all parties; as it is perfectly inconceivable that any one who had felt obliged to place an unhappy friend or relative under restraint should wish to interfere with the discipline necessary for his ultimate advantage; whereas a contrary system is likely to give occasion to constant doubts and fears on one hand, and to the possibility of ill treatment or unnecessary restraint on the other. In one of the courts appropriated to the use of such male patients as were sufficiently convalescent to permit their associating together, and amusing themselves with the different games in which they are permitted to share, we saw a young Englishman, now rapidly recovering, but who had scrawled over the walls of his own sleeping-apartment, poor fellow! with a pencil, a vast quantity of writing, almost wholly on religious subjects; proving but too plainly that he was one of the many victims of fanaticism. Every thought seemed pregnant with suffering, and sometimes bursts of agony were scrawled in trembling characters, that spoke the very extremity of terror. "Who is there can endure fire and flame for ever, for ever, and for ever?" "Death is before us—Hell follows it!" "The bottomless pit—groans—tortures—anguish—for ever!"... Such sentences as these were still legible, though much had been obliterated.
Who can wonder that a mind thus occupied should lose that fine balance with which nature has arranged our faculties, making one keep watch and ward over the other?... This poor fellow lost his wits under the process of conversion: Judgment being entirely overthrown, Imagination had vaulted into its seat, pregnant with visions black as night, dark—oh! far darker than the tomb! "palled in the dunnest smoke of hell," and armed with every image for the eternity of torture that the ingenuity of man could devise. Who can wonder at his madness? And how many crimes are there recorded in the Newgate Calendar which equal in atrocity that of so distorting a mind, that sought to raise its humble hopes towards heaven!
I felt particularly interested for this poor lunatic, both as my countryman, and the victim of by far the most fearful tyranny that man can exercise on man. Against all other injury it is not difficult to believe that a steadfast spirit can arm itself and say with Hamlet,
"I do not set my life at a pin's fee."
But against this, it were a vain boast to add,