On
being answered in the negative, "Then go and hear him," she added, "when
you return to London." She went on to say that the second coming of the
Saviour was to take place, and the world to be destroyed in a very few
days, and that she had a commission to proclaim the approach of that
event. "These poor people," said she, "think that I am here on the same
account as themselves, when I am only here to prepare the way for the
second coming."
"I'm thinking, please yer honor, that it is quite time I was let out of
this place," said a voice as we entered one of the wards. Dr. Conolly told
me that he had several Irish patients in the asylum, and that they gave
him the most trouble on account of the hurry in which they were to be
discharged. We heard the same request eagerly made in the same brogue by
various other patients of both sexes.
As I left this multitude of lunatics, promiscuously gathered from the poor
and the reduced class, comprising all varieties of mental disease, from
idiocy to madness, yet all of them held in such admirable order by the law
of kindness, that to the casual observer most of them betrayed no symptoms
of insanity, and of the rest, many appeared to be only very odd people,
quietly pursuing their own harmless whims, I could not but feel the
highest veneration for the enlightened humanity by which the establishment
was directed.
