highest enjoyment of a melancholy mind. The fears and sorrows which fill the melancholy bosoms of these poor sufferers drive them from all the lively enjoyments of social life. The strong sense they entertain of the inadequacy of their powers to endure the company, or support the conversation, of other men, without becoming objects of laughter and derision, subdues all the energies of their souls.

While by this dire disease their souls are toss'd,
Their heavenly spirits lie extinct and lost :
Nor steal one glance, before their bodies die,
From this dark dungeon to their native sky.

Like Bellerophon, they wander through the deepest glooms and most sequestered vales, sad, solitary, and dejected; avoiding the sight of their fellow creatures, and averse even from their best and most familiar friends. The first symptoms by which the citizens of Abdera discovered the melancholy of Democritus, were, his forsaking the city, wandering, in the day, on the green banks of the neighbouring brooks, and sleeping at nights in dark groves or hollow trees. Egyptians in their hieroglyphics, express a melancholy man by a hare sitting in her form, as being the most timid and solitary of all animals.

The

A Tedium Vita, or weariness of life, succeeds. Incapable of relishing any of the pleasures or amusements of the world, uneasy and restless in every situation, displeased with every occurrence, and anxious to pull the crawling serpent from their hearts, they call one moment upon death

to relieve them from their miseries, and the next fly from his feared embrace: unwilling to die, and yet unable to live.

Until the increasing wound such pangs create,

That their own hands prevent the stroke of fate. The poisoned bowl of Socrates, the dagger of Lucretia, the halter of Timon, the knife of Cato, and the sword of Nero, are the fell instruments which fate bequeaths to their disordered souls.

Melancholy discloses its symptoms according to the sentiments and passions of the minds it affects. An ambitious man fancies himself a lord, statesman, minister, king, emperor, or monarch, and pleases his mind with the vain hopes of even future preferment. Elinora Meliorina, a melancholy but aspiring lady of Mantua, conceived she was married to a king, and would kneel down and address her husband as if he were on his throne; and if she found by chance a bit of glass on a dung-hill, or in the street, she would say it was a jewel sent to her by her lord and husband. The mind of a covetous man sees nothing but his re or spe, and looks at the most valuable objects with an eye of hope, or with the fond conceit that they are already his own. A love-sick brain adores, in romantic strains, the lovely idol of his heart,

"And in the shape of Corin, sits all day

Playing on pipes of corn, and versing love
To amorous Phillida ;"

or sighs in real misery at her fancied frowns. And a scholar's mind evaporates in the fumes of imaginary praise and literary distinction.

Rhasis, the Arabian, divides the symptoms of melancholy into three degrees: First, falsa cogi. tatio, such as consist in false conceits and idle thoughts secondly, falso cogitata loqui, where the patient soliloquises and utters his conceits to himself; and thirdly, when the patient puts his conceits into practice. But it is impossible to speak sufficiently upon this subject; for to attempt a description of a phantastical conceit, a corrupt imagination, or a vain thought, would be like the artist, in Ausonius, who attempted to paint an echo. Certain it is, however, that there is nothing so vain, absurd, ridiculous, extravagant, impossible, incredible, chimerical, prodigious, or strange, which a melancholy man will not really fear, feign, suspect, and imagine: and what Ludovicus Vives said in jest, of a silly country fellow that killed his ass for drinking up the moon, ut lunam mundo rederet, we may truly say of him in earnest. The tower of Babel never yielded such confusion of tongues as the chaos of melancholy does variety of symptoms; for there is in every species of melancholy similitudo dissimilis; as in men's faces, a disagreeing likeness still: and as in a river we swim in the same place, though not in the same identical water, so this disease yields a continued succession of different symptoms.

CHAPTER V.

THE CURE OF MELANCHOLY.

MELANCHOLY is said to be the inexorable parent of every mental disease; but Paracelsus ridicules the idea of its being incurable; and certain it is, that this dreadful malady, even in its most afflicting stages, seldom causes immediate death; except, indeed, by the ungoverned hand of the miserable sufferer. Montanus, however, is of opinion, that to whatever extent the patient may be relieved, some dregs and vestiges, the veteris vestigia flamma, will still remain, and accompany him to his grave; and unquestionably it is a disease much more easy to be prevented than entirely cured.

"To administer to a mind diseased,

Pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow,
Raze out the written troubles of the brain,
And with some sweet oblivious antidote
Cleanse the foul bosom of that perilous stuff
Which weighs upon the heart,

is certainly a task surrounded with difficulties seemingly insurmountable; but when we seriously consider the assistance that may be derived from Him who turns "the mourning of those that trust in Him into joy and gladness*," the frowns of despair will be converted into the

* Ecclesiasticus.

smiles of hope, and the idea of difficulty will vanish in proportion to our faith in the Almighty.

"For the Almighty Power above

With ease can save each object of his love:
Wide as his will extends his bounteous grace,
Nor lost in time, nor circumscribed by place."

God hath "created medicines of the earth," and appointed physicians, by their art and industry, to prepare and apply these treasures to the use of man; and therefore, à Jove principium, before we begin with medicines, we should use prayer*, and continue, not one without the other, but both together; for otherwise, as the prophet Jeremiah denounced of the children of Egypt, "in vain we shall use medicine or sue for health." The efficacy of prayer, indeed, in this complaint, is acknowledged not only by Hippocrates, Galen, and Hyperius, but by every other rational and good physician, many of whom, especially Messul and Crito, concluded their consultations with a solemn address to the Deity, imploring him to deliver their unhappy brother from the perils of his distress.

"Orandum est ut sit mens sana in corpore sano."

The Physician, who is manus Dei, and to whom God hath given knowledge that he might be glorified in all his wondrous works, ought next to be sought; for "with such agents

"Be careful for nothing; but in every thing by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known unto God."-Phil. iv. 6.