THE FRIEND OF AN HOUR.

BY

HARRIETTE

V. M. FRENCH.

[Born at Chester, December 23, 1818. Died at Chester, March 9, 1841.]

THERE is truth in the love that has grown up with years,
Born in sorrow and sadness - and nourished with tears;
But give me the friendship of mirth's brilliant hour,
And still let me laugh with the friend of an hour.

Dream not that in weeping more pleasure you find,
O'er the friends you have loved in the years left behind;
They were dear they are dear, still defying Time's power;
But let me laugh on, with the friend of an hour.

The friends that I loved they have dearer ones now,

Or the damp earth rests heavily on their cold brow;
And my days would soon find me like autumn's lone flower,
Could not gather bliss with the friend of an hour.

There are some who still love, though their love is forgot,
There are some who have loved me - whose love now is not;
I will never regret them or call back their power,
But will cherish the true, with the friend of an hour.

O sadly my spirit within me is bowed,

When I think of lost loved ones, the grave and the shroud;

And darkly the shade on my future would lower,

But I weep o'er the dead with the friend of an hour.

THE M'LEAN ASYLUM FOR THE INSANE.

BY LUTHER V. BELL, SUPERINTENDENT.

In its original inception, there was one circumstance in its constitution, perhaps introduced from a kind of necessity, which time has shown to have been fraught with most important bearings, not only upon this Asylum itself, but upon the remaining hospitals of New England, whose constitutions have been modified from this. I refer to the mixed character of a public and private institution which it bears. This union of traits is believed to combine the respective advantages of both classes of institutions as they exist abroad, at the same time the great objections to each are avoided.

To demonstrate this it will be well to take a survey of the English system. The private mad-houses, as they are termed, have always existed in that country. Any individual who chose could receive as boarders such patients as their friends or guardians contracted for. In 1815 and 1816, the abuses perpetrated in these mad-houses had become so crying as to call for a public investigation, and the Parliamentary inquiry developed an amount of horrid cruelty, unequalled in the annals of modern crime. The effects of this appalling disclosure are felt to this day and to this side of the Atlantic, and we have frequent occasions to trace distinctly the prejudices and impressions of our citizens back to the effect of those developements. Since that period the system has remained unchanged, but Parliament has thrown a barrier of protection in some degree around the poor lunatic, by almost annual statutory provis

ions providing for licensing, inspecting, and otherwise regulating these establishments.

It would seem always to have been the opinion of those who have written on these points, that the system was one of horrors. The obvious objection is, that the best interests of the patient and the individual who receives the compensation for his support, are antagonistical to each other, and no inspection can be so thorough as to reach the legion of institutions existing. As was remarked to me by an eminent medical gentleman conversant with this subject, “if the keeper of a mad-house in which his whole property and living are invested, could watch with pleasure the speedy convalescence of a patient who was paying a weekly fee of four or five guineas, he must be of that class of natural saints who are not numerous in any country."

Every one acquainted with the nice balance of the mind on a tendency to convalescence, must see how easy a few negative actions would delay recovery for ever, yet without the commission of one act or the uttering one sentiment which could be objected to in words! So objectionable is this system in the eyes of medical men who have been most devoted to the subject of insanity, that Drs. Conolly, Millingen and Brown, the three last writers in England, call loudly upon government to assume the entire control of the insane.

It cannot but be now regarded as a fortunate circumstance, - as a providential resulting of good from seeming evil, that private mad-houses were never much introduced in this country. If in consequence of the want of even this provision, numerous instances of great suffering and neglect in confinement in prisons and houses of relatives occurred, yet from no provision existing, when the public mind was called to act, the action was at once far more original, decisive and effective, than if the half remedy of small private establishments had been adopted. From no provision for the insane, the step was one to a class of public institutions which certainly have never been surpassed in their results;

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-a class of institutions which were soon adopted by the refined and the wealthy.

The public part of the constitution of this Asylum, and of those modelled on its plan, assures an entire separation of any interest on the part of its officers adverse to the patient's highest good; it implies a certain, thorough, and effective supervision of its whole management down to its minutest detail, by a body of gentlemen, selected for their public character and known interest in the cause of justice and humanity.

Still another advantage of the public character of an Asylum, consists in its forming a nucleus around which the efforts of the benevolent may concentrate. This institution has felt this advantage in the reiterated benefactions and bequests of the wealthy, which have here provided the abundant means of affording the best advantages to a great number, and their benevolence is felt to the farthest sections of our land in other institutions, which have reaped from this indirectly the benefit of these donations.

An insane institution, arranged for the highest advantage of its inmates, must be peculiar in its construction and exceedingly expensive. A concentration of means beyond individual capital, and as a general rule beyond the economical views of legislative bodies, is necessary. After the expensive machinery of treatment, such as architectural arrangements, &c. is once provided, the results from a moderate expenditure of means are highly gratifying.

The peculiar advantages of the private character of an Asylum are also numerous, and varying with the community in which the institution is placed. Prominent among these is the circumstance, which on recovery cannot but be consolatory to him, that the patient feels that he is intrusted to medical care by his friends and relatives as a sick man, and of course his self-respect is saved from the humiliation of knowing that he has been placed under custody by the arm of the law as a dangerous member of society.

SPRING.

BY CARLOS WILCOX.

LONG Swoln in drenching rain, seeds, germs, and buds,
Start at the touch of vivifying beams.

Moved by their secret force, the vital lymph
Diffusive runs, and spreads o'er wood and field
A flood of verdure. Clothed, in one short week,
Is naked Nature in her full attire.

On the first morn, light as an open plain

Is all the woodland, filled with sunbeams, poured
Through the bare tops, on yellow leaves below,
With strong reflection: on the last, 't is dark
With full-grown foliage, shading all within.
In one short week the orchard buds and blooms;
And now, when steeped in dew or gentle showers,
It yields the purest sweetness to the breeze,
Or all the tranquil atmosphere perfumes.
E'en from the juicy leaves of sudden growth,
And the rank grass of steaming ground, the air,
Filled with a watery glimmering, receives
A grateful smell, exhaled by warming rays.
Each day are heard, and almost every hour,
New notes to swell the music of the groves.
And soon the latest of the feather'd train
At evening twilight come; the lonely snipe,
O'er marshy fields, high in the dusky air,
Invisible, but with faint, tremulous tones,
Hovering or playing o'er the listener's head;
And, in mid-air, the sportive night-hawk, seen
Flying a while at random, uttering oft
A cheerful cry, attended with a shake
Of level pinions, dark, but when upturned
Against the brightness of the western sky,
One white plume showing in the midst of each,
Then far down diving with loud hollow sound;
And, deep at first within the distant wood,
The whip-poor-will, her name her only song.
She, soon as children from the noisy sport
Of whooping, laughing, talking with all tones,
To hear the echoes of the empty barn,
Are by her voice diverted and held mute,
Comes to the margin of the nearest grove;