The Birmingham age-herald., 1909-11-21

cranial asymmetry and asymmetry ot faculties, evidently. Aristotle believed that temporary congestion of the brain made temporary geniuses. Plutarch tells us that Cato, just before committing sui eide exclaimed: "Since when have I showed signs of insanity?"
 But to come to more recent times Moreau of Tours, in his Psychology Nor bide," says: Among men of distinguished abilities we find the greatest percentage of insane persons" Nesbit, in his work on the Insanity of Genius,' says: Gen ius and insanity are but different phases of morbid susceptibility of, or want of balance in, the cerebro-spinal sys- tenn"
 The Philosopher schaupenhauer was often considered an insane man. Sir Isaac Newton wrote to the metaphysician, John Locke. that he "often passed months without consistency of thought" Mich ael Angelo, while at work on the Last Judgment" in the Sistene chapel at the Vatican, lost his mind and for months did not recover his reason. Raphael was at times pronouncedly insane. In one of his spells he purposed to commit suicide and take along with him into eternity the woman that he loved. He took her in a boat and rowed out upon the Fiber, and binding a rope around her body, he lifted her to the side of the boat to throw her into the river. intending to follow her himself; but her head fell In helplessness upon his shoulder, and had the effect of quieting the madness of his mind. Heine, the best-loved lyric-poet of Germany, was mentally diseased and morbidly clouded. there was a sad chapter of insanity in the early history of George Sand who has been called ''the most remarkable woman of this age and the greatest au- thoress in the worlds history"
 The great Cardinal Richelieu had at tacks of insanity. It was in his family; his sister and brother both being insane. Dean Swift has been called the most bril- liant man of his century; yet in his col- lege days he had symptomatic insanity. and before dying became positively a madman. The reader will find a most in- teresting account of Swift's madness as displayed on the night of the burial of Stella, in 'The English Humorists of the Eighteenth Century" by Thackeray. As I am writing from memory I may be mis- taken in the title, but it is much like what I have given.
 Shelley, in his college days, was called Mad Shelley" He had all manner of hallucinations and suffered from som nambulism; at the age of 20 he was a slave to opium, as were De Quincy and Coleridge. Coleridge.V as a child, was precocious and strangely morbid, and in manhood was undoubtedly insane at times.
 Charles Lamb and the sister who wrote with him the famous Tales From Shakespeare were both insane. Mary Lamb, the sister, stabbed her mother to the heart, who fell to the floor and died at her daughters feet. Charles deter mined to spend his life in caring for his sister. She was frequently confined with In the Hoxton asylum for the insane. When her paroxysms of madness were coming on, she and her brother were often seen on their way to the asylum, she leaning upon his arm and he with her straightjacket in his hand. Finally, he himself was seized with acute insanity, melancholia and alcoholism. In Edward Gilpin Johnson's compilation of "rhe Best Letters of Charles Lamb.' the reader will fnd Lambs references to his mad