six thousand patients have been admitted into this charity since 1839. During the term of office of the present resident physician, there have been received three thousand eight hundred and eighty-two insane persons, and one thousand eight hundred and twenty discharged recovered, showing the amount of recovery to be nearly fifty per cent. At present the inmates number six hundred, being a much larger number than in any other hospital for the insane in this country. Five-sixths of this number are foreigners. Much reliance is placed on medical treatment during the first year of the existence of insanity; but after that period, the principal hope of recovery is from moral treatment. This last consists mainly in the correction of improper habits, a healthy occupation of mind and body by properly selected labor, reading, and amusements, such as dancing, music, games, &c. To one who has drawn his ideas of a lunatic asylum from works of fiction, or from accounts of systems followed in such institutions years ago, it would be a matter of wonder to find among so large a number of insane as are here gathered together so few requiring confinement or restraint. In fact, it may be stated as a general rule, that the greater the personal liberty enjoyed, consistent with good judgment and safety to the patient, the more quiet, manageable, and orderly he will be. No healthier or more beautiful location for an asylum could have been chosen than the one occupied by the subject of our sketch. Good air, good drainage, easy access to the city, seclusion from the outside world, a flowing river on each side, enlivened by passing steamboats and white-winged sailing vessels, a surrounding country made picturesque by green woods and jutting river points and growing villages, render it all in this respect that could be desired. The same remark made by a celebrated engineer that lakes and rivers were made for canals, might be extended to Blackwell's Island, that it was made for the public institutions of New-York city. The city government is exceedingly fortunate in having at the head of this important institution, so capable and gentlemanly a superintendent as Dr. M. H. Ranney. NIGHT VIEWS FROM MY WINDOW. LUNAR SCENERY. A S 1 draw back the curtain, a flood of pale, silvery light streams into the quiet room where I take my post for a good portion of the night,-to me ever a period of the purest, the most peaceful, and, I may add, profitable enjoyment. And now the window is open, and there is nothing between me and heaven but the dark sky, and the brilliant moon and stars, the work of God's fingers, unobscured by a cloud. It is strange what a difference there is between an open and a closed window. When thus gazing upward, glasseven the clearest and the purest-always gives a sensation of restraint, more or less. You feel there is something material still between you and the boundless depths above, the mighty expanse into which you look, and where you would fain wander; but, that once removed, and an undefinable sense of liberty-freedom from all physical restraint-is experienced, and you may soar away at will. The mind becomes endowed, as it were, with an angelic power and desire, which, although it is for the present denied to the body, will, no doubt, be one day permitted to both to exercise far more fully than at present; such a sensation, possibly, as St. Paul experienced in anticipation when he was "caught up to the third heavens," with feelings so strange that, as he avers, he could not tell whether he was "in the body or out of the body." With a telescope for at once my guide and my bark, I launch forth through the silent night into the dark ocean of space above me. I strike out into the remotest regions of the universe-I transport myself at will to worlds whose light would never reach the retina of my eye, save through the wonderful instrument whose field it illumines. Thus prepared, then, I take my post, I keep my watch to-night. There is something at once soothing and exciting in this midnight, breathless stillness of the terrestrial world, and the calm, divine repose of the celestial regions, whither I am about to journey. The air is so still that the least sound becomes audible. I hear the midnight chime of the bells from the distant city; and now, as the sound dies away, the roar of the surf as it breaks with softened murmur, tossing its green waves and glittering spray in the clear moonlight upon the neighboring | find and appreciate the objects of interest shore but naught else, save now and then the gentle rustle of a withered leaf as it falls without, or the impatient chirrup of the little bird whose sleep I have disturbed in the clustering passion-flower that hangs in dark masses from the window. I direct my telescope to the heavens, and, passing it slowly from star to star, I at length fix it upon that bright moon, now in her first quarter. I apply my eye to the glass, and now-what do I see? It brings that beauteous globe so near that I am absolutely upon it; but what a strange metamorphosis! No one who has been accustomed to see it from the earth would recognize it. Like a face which appears beautiful at a distance, but is found full of wrinkles and imperfections when close to it; so our lovely satellite, whose beauty has lent inspiration to the poet's verse, and her charm to the painter's landscape, loses her perfections in a moment. is no longer the soft, tender, liquid, silvery thing, whose familiar face we love, and whose beams we hail, whether breaking through the sea of clouds among which she sails, or whitening the gray ruin, or shining on the placid lake, or the waveless sea. No; I perceive a huge bright mass, full of holes, rents, and fissures; it is a strange-looking country, indeed, that we have arrived at a wonderful place, unlike anything we could have imagined, so different indeed from the expectations usually formed by those who (hearing of mountains and valleys in the moon) long to see them, that, to prevent disappointment, some explanation is necessary to enable such persons to understand what they see, and teach them what to look for and how to She there. To such of our readers, then, as are unaccustomed to telescopic observation, I would say, there are a few obstacles in the way of appreciating lunar scenery which you must be prepared for beforehand. For instance, at the first moment your eye is applied to the telescope, (say, with a power of 120 upon it,) you will find yourself within two thousand miles only of the moon; in fact, you will see it precisely as you would if you were removed bodily and placed upon a planet separated from it by that interval: short, indeed, when compared with the actual distance of the moon from the earth, (two hundred and forty thousand miles,) or with other astronomical intervals, and yet still very considerable, as can easily be understood by thinking what a distance two thousand miles is with reference to any terrestrial object-it is, in fact, equal to a fourth part of the diameter of our globe, or one entire diameter of the moon from herself. At such a distance here, were a bird's-eye view possible, how little could be discerned! At this distance, indeed, it is plain no minute object could be seen; but yet it is astonishing how much is visi ble, and the general features of the lunar surface are at once quite perceptible to the practised eye. But there are three striking effeces in particular which this proximity immediately produces. The first is increase of brightness, as when a lamp or candle is brought close to the eye. The second is increase of size, or the angle subtended at the eye; and the third, distinctness of shape, both as to the general figure of the moon herself, and the objects discernible upon her surface. The first of these is intense, and even painful to the eye not accustomed to it, so that an inexperienced observer sees but comparatively little at first from the glare. If we wait a little, however, the eye soon accommodates itself to the brightness, as it does to the darkness. It is, however, a good plan with powerful telescopes, (as there is always abundance of light to spare,) to shut off a portion of it by a diaphragm upon the object-glass, which likewise has the effect of increasing the distinctness. The second effect, increase of size, is not so perceptible as might be imagined; and there are few telescopic effects in which the eye is deceived more than in forming an estimate of the size of objects. A power such as I have mentioned would increase the size of the moon superficially one hundred and twenty times, so that in the portion of the lunar surface before the eye, all comprised within the space, say of a four-inch achromatic, such as I am now using, you have an image of the moon magnified one hundred and twenty times, or one hundred and twenty times larger than as seen with the naked eye. This amount of magnifying power will have the immediate effect, not of swelling the dimensions of the moon accordingly, which the ignorant or inexperienced might expect, but which a moment's reflection will show to be impossible, as the space you can see must be limited by the actual size of the aperture, but it will have the effect of enabling you to see a small portion | only of the body made so much larger by optical power, that it cannot fit, as it were, within the small aperture through which you look, and only presents a small portion of its surface at a time, leaving to your imagination the remainder of a huge moon to be examined in its various parts in succession, by simply traversing or moving the telescope over it. The extent of surface, therefore, which you can see upon the moon, will diminish with the increase of magnifying power; just as in approaching a large city from a distance, at first you obtain a coup d'œil of the entire, but as you draw near to it, you see only a street, and at length a single house is sufficient to occupy the entire field of view. So with a power of about 90, you may see the entire disc of the moon at once; but increase the power to 250, and little more than a single crater, with its adjoining neighborhood, is visible. : The third effect necessary to be prepared for is with reference to the objects which, under telescopic power, become visible distinctly on the lunar surface. Many of these you have never seen anything like before; you are at once led therefore to compare them with, or find a resemblance for them in, something that you have seen. This is likely to mislead by conveying a false impression; the color, for instance, which resembles plaster of Paris, or the innumerable holes or excrescences, which look like bubbles floating upon oil, or caused by fermentation or decay all these comparisons, which are derived from terrestrial things, are false and must be dismissed; in fact, you see a perfectly new and strange object, unlike anything terrestrial that could convey to your mind a true resemblance of it. And then, when you have got over all this, and found that the mountains and valleys of the moon you have heard of are not like our valleys, or mountains, or soil, and you at length have succeeded in realizing the fact that that great glaring thing covered with holes and spots, is really a vast planet or world, there remains the difficulty of realizing the size of the separate objects which you see so distinctly, together with the vast distances over which the eye can travel in an instant. A prospect, in fact, is opened to you which could never be seen on earth-even from the loftiest mountain in the world-namely, an extent of two thousand miles, or an area of seven millions of square miles, stretched beneath you; a plain of fifteen hundred miles appearing but a little patch as in a map, and mountains rivaling the Alps or Andes as a boundary or shading slightly elevated. And yet this, too, can be overcome by a little patient observation, by minute attention to each separate object; marking not only the object itself, but the shadow it casts. When once the secret of telescopic observation of the moon is thus acquired, there is nothing more delightful than to wander through its grand and terrible scenery, and no more effort will be required than is necessary to accommodate the gigantic proportions of our Alpine regions to the diminutive representation of them by the artist in a picture one foot square. And now, where are we to-night? A more beautiful or picturesque portion of the lunar country we could not have fallen upon. We have dropped from our terrestrial sphere right over Copernicus; and from one of the lofty peaks of a cluster of mountains a little to the southward of that remarkable crater-down into the very mouth of one of which, indeed, I can partially see-let us take our position. What a scene is here! Beneath our feet, some thousand feet below, spreads the vast plain of the Mare Imbrium, or Sea of Showers; it is shining in the glare of the fierce light that beats upon it from the rising sun of a lunar morning-whose day will not end for a fortnight-and whose long, black shadows are projecting from a thousand mountain-peaks, whose tops shine like silver, and are scattered over the plain here and there, some in lonely grandeur, others like the well-defined and dark semicircular chain of the Apennines, extending like a continuous craggy coast-line for six hundred miles, forming the extreme boundary of the solitary desert they inclose. But what of the plain? It is called the Sea of Showers. It seems a vast plain of sand-a sterile desert like the Great Sahara of Africa, or any of our own terrestrial flats. To me, at least, it has a soft and smooth look that conveys irresistibly the idea of sand, or something analogous to it. Certainly no water is there to cool or moisten it now, whatever may have been its former history; and no change whatever has been observed upon its surface such as would be caused by the movements or works of living creatures. After sixteen years' frequent observation, I can say with truth, that nothing could be more perfectly changeless than the face of that silent, ghastly plain. I remember, wher. first I commenced lunar observations, looking many a night with intense eagerness in the hopes of discovering (and thus immortalizing myself by so doing, as I thought) some change, however slight; but no-no cloud, however faint, dimmed it—no shadow stole over it. On the same spots the same marks, shadows, and craters, reappeared in their silent calmness and majesty, or silvery beauty, or desolate wildness; but nothing moved, nothing changed: and were I there, I feel convinced I should find that nothing breathed or stirred, nor has stirred for agesthat perfect silence reigns over its desert shores—and motionless, noiseless, breathless, windless nature broods over that arid waste; and yet, I must acknowledge, it looks very like the bottom of a dried-up ocean of former days. Mysterious wavy irregularities creep over its surface like sand-hillocks, thrown up by the action of water, or perchance of wind, but more like the former. The different lights and shades, too, seem to indicate different depths of bottom, as is experienced with the sounding line; and its boundaries or shores, as we may call them, bend into curved bays, run into creeks, and jut out into promontories, just as we find on the shores of our terrestrial oceans, washed away as they are by the perpetual beat and thunder of the waves. What are we to conclude, then, as to these dry seas or basins which stretch their immense superficies over the lunar surface? Evidently there can be but two hypotheses concerning them, either that they are a preparation for future, or the old dried-up basins of former oceans. Astronomers have hitherto been inclined to the former opinion as being the more probable; chiefly, indeed, from the abrupt and precipitous manner in which the mountain-chains descend to the seas, the slope being generally toward the land side, while a steep wall of rock is presented to the plain. This would imply the absence of all abrasion or attrition by the power of water against the lunar shores. Closer observation, however, together with the possession of more perfect instruments, has removed, in a great measure, this objection; and Professor Phillips, at a late meeting of the British Association, gave his testimony most strongly in favor of the latter opinion; viz., that, although it is probable not a drop of water exists now upon our satellite in the shape of oceans, it is not so clear that it may not have existed there once; and that the dry plains we behold are, in fact, but the beds of oceans now no more. My own observation concurs fully with this; in fact, I cannot see the soft, wavy outline of those shores, with their sinuous bays and rounded promontories and creeks, and their apparently soft and bil-` lowy, sandy surface, together with the undulating character of their scenery, without being deeply impressed with the conviction that water once rolled over them, and waves tossed high their lunar spray as they dashed against those rugged and dreary, but now silent coasts. IMPRESSIONS OF TRAVEL IN FRANCE. HE French are a gay, perhaps a friv and, it is supposed, not much more "moral sense;" but in "good taste" they excel all other nations, and their good taste supplies, largely, their lack of good sense or even moral sense. The traveler, passing from the coast inland-say from Havre to Paris-is struck by the universal aspect of neatness and good arrangement which the farms, the people, all things, present-except the interior of the houses, of which, however, he gets glimpses too slight to justify an opinion. The scenery is not remarkable, now that the Seine is deserted for the railroad; but a quiet, rural charm is thrown over it, by the exterior beauty and comfortableness of the thatched and arbored homes of the peasants, and their thoroughly cultivated fields. Fences, whether your northern straight bars or Virginia zig-| zags, are hardly known here. The fields are defined by varying stripes of cultivation, which lie gracefully side by side, extending sometimes over acres, along the plains, down into the valleys, or up the hill-sides. They produce a beautiful effect, their mathematical uniformity being usually relieved by frequent clumps of forest, by the natural variations of the surface, and the different degrees of growth or the various hues of the crops. Cattle, of course, cannot go at large without fences; but grazing is very limited in France, and where it does exist at all, gives to the scenery the additional charm of the shepherd with his crook and dog, and old idylic associations. The public roads along these farms are kept in the best condition. They are usually shaded and beautified by parallel lines of trees, which form the only protection, if such it may be called, to the adjacent fields. A Yankee with his native recollections of orchard-thieving, and mischievous fruit-loving boys, can hardly credit his eyes when he sees these rich fruit fields and gardens verging on to the public road, and defined from it only by a few of the road-side trees or their own luxuriance. Will you believe me when I affirm that I have walked joyously with joyous friends (feeling the very hilarity of the scene and dreaming of the golden age) along miles of vineyards, grain-fields, olive-groves, and strawberry-beds, whose vines, gemmed with the luscious fruit, hung quite out upon the side-walk ?-miles of comparative solitude, where any amount The tempting strawberries, from three to four inches in circumference, unprotected by wall, hedge, or fence of any kind, creeping to your very feet among the grass of the road-side, lie untouched save by rightful hands. And this too in the very vicinity of Paris. Let the traveler accompany us in some of our favorite walks to Bourgla-Reine, and thence through the teeming fields of Fontenay-aux-Roses, (a village as beautiful as its name,) of Sceaux, of the Vallee-aux-Loups, (sacred by the memory of Chateaubriand,) everywhere, even to within ten rods of the pleasure houses of "Robinson Crusoe,"-the gay resort of all the neighboring population and of Paris itself-will be found these tempting but unprotected fields, safe from depredations. Only where they wish to protect themselves from observation-to enjoy the gardens around their houses unobserveddo the French wall them in, and then they do it thoroughly, with masonry fit for a prison. 66 How is this? do you ask. Have the French a nicer sense of right and wrong than we orthodox Yankees? Certainly not, but they have a nicer sense of politeness. It would be meanness for any one to abuse the confidence with which property is thus exposed. Were it less confidently exposed, it would probably be more liable to depredations. Trust a man if you would have him trustworthy," some one has said. It is, in other words, not conscience but custom that maintains the sacredness of this kind of property in France. Everything goes by fashion here, and it is not fashionable—it is decidedly in bad conventional taste for a Frenchman to gratify his taste for grapes or strawberries by the meanness of petty pilfering. The farm-houses look very pretty, at least in the distance at which you pass them on the highway. They are reached by lanes of stately trees, never economically direct, as with us, but gracefully winding. They are usually inclosed, house, out-houses, barn, stables, and all, in a square or circle of trees, which incloses them with the regularity, but with none of the exclusiveness of a wall. I have many a time, when observing this beautiful landscape feature of France, |