After wending our way through various other portions of the buildings, and stopping here and there to bestow a hasty glance at one and another rare specimen of curiously carved workmanship, by some lunatic genius, we find ourselves gazing through iron bars at a scene which would cause the most unfeeling heart to shudder with horror. There are grouped together, in the narrow confines of four tall brick walls, not less than a hundred patients in the very worst stages of lunacy. It seems that the darkest cavern in the regions of Despair could present no more heart-rending picture.
The wild glare of the piercing eye, the dishevelled locks; the meaningless gibberish; the incoherent babbling; the fiendish ravings that rent the silent air, together with numberless other acts which constitute the sum of a poor maniac’s life, have left an impression on our mind that will go with us to our grave.
How true are the words of the poet—
“Oh, what a noble mind is here o’erthrown!
The courtier’s, soldier’s, scholar’s eye, tongue, sword;
The glass of fashion, and the mould of form,
The observed of all observers, quite, quite down.”
We willingly leave such scenes, and turn our ready steps to an observatory which crowns the main building, and commands one of the loveliest views we ever witnessed.
Let us forget the painful sights we have just beheld, and drink in the resplendent beauty of nature as she stands robed in the crimson folds of evening—
“For the west yet glimmers with some streaks of day.”