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"I had heard of Sunday markets in the West Indies, and of the benevolent attempts of Government to abolish them; but who ever heard of a Sunday market in London! I blushed for my country-I sickened at the scene, and would fain have turned away my eyes, and supposed myself deceived; but I could not, the facts were too appalling and apparent. Here were garments of all sorts, for young and old, male and female, hung up in the open street row upon row; there were carcases, and sides, and joints, and cuttings, exposed to the view, and thrust upon the notice of every passerby in the most tempting manner; while scores were crossing and re-crossing the street, laying hold of any who seemed dis- | posed to look and listen, and inviting all to examine and cheapen, to fit on and buy.

"In one part of the street, a number of poor creatures were arranged before and around as many boards covered with boots, and shoes, and slippers, busily employed | in blacking and polishing their several wares; to avoid whose elbows and filthy sprinklings, I turned into the cart-road, and then I narrowly escaped being required to interfere by a busy butcher, who, finding the quality of his meat arraigned by some of his customers, turned to the crowd, and darting his eye toward a tall Irish labourer on my right, appealed to him, with horrid oaths, whether the meat was not equal to any in London, and was answered by blasphemies equally revolting and offen sive..

“ I had scarcely passed by the swearing butcher, when my ears were assailed by the cries of those who, in announcing the quali- | ties and prices of their fruit and vegetables, evinced their anxiety to secure customers, and empty their baskets. To their noisy din were added the quarrellings of drunken | men and women of the lowest description, the choppings, and bargainings, and reckonings, and cursings of buyers and sellers, while the loud vociferations and disgusting gestures of the ragged crowds surrounding the gin-shops, occasioned the most horrible discordances, and completed the frightful picture. And this is London !London in the nineteenth century ! --- London on the Sabbath-day!-London, between the hours of ten and eleven on the morning of that hallowed day, while the bells of the seve ral steeples were calling to worship, and announcing the hour of prayer!!"

"Another gentleman, who is an active and liberal friend of this Society, has supplied the Secretaries with the results of his personal inspection of various streets, and

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other public avenues in the north-western out-parishes of this metropolis, and it is affecting to know, that in twenty streets, &c. he numbered no less than four hundred and seventy-three shops of different trades, open for business on the Lord's-day, beside multitudes of fruit and other stalls, crowds of squalid and profligate persons around the liquor shops, and many places exhibiting rather the bustle of a fair than the quietude of the Sabbath.

"Whilst the streets and markets present these scenes, the fields and banks of various canals in the environs of the city, exhibit the same wanton neglect of God's holy day, though in other forms. The fields of Mile End, Stepney, Bethnal Green, Hoxton, Islington, Somers Towns, Chelsea, and Southwark, are resorts of young and abandoned persons, who are engaged in the fights of dogs and pugilists, the shooting of pigeons, the hunting of ducks, and in various knavish games. While multitudes of others are employed in the Surry, the Regent's, and the Grand Junction Canals, and the New and Lee Rivers, in fishing and bathing.

"It has been given in evidence by several Magistrates, before the last Police Committee of the House of Commons, that in the parks and out-skirts of the town, numerous gangs and parties of young persous assemble on the Sabbath-day, for the express purpose of indulging in the vice of gambling.'

“ If we turn from these scenes to the banks of our noble river, we shall find that they also are crowded by those who are seeking “ their own pleasure on God's holy day." The passage of steam-boats to Margate, the Nore, Gravesend, and Richmond, on every Sunday during the summer months, affords an opportunity of Sabbath-breaking, which multitudes always embrace, but which the unusual cheapness of their fares, during the last season, greatly increased. Thus the walls of our city were covered with placards, announcing “ Sunday excursions to sea;" and it has been boastfully declared by a notorious Sunday newspaper, that six thousand persons were thus engaged on the several Sabbaths in the month of August. The town of Gravesend alone has witnessed more than two thousand Sabbathbreakers land on her new pier, and spread through her streets and fields the folly and crime of a London population. Nor do the upper parts of the river present a more satisfactory scene; for beside the steamers which run to Richmond, many hundred wherries are known to pass through Putney Bridge, filled by thoughtless multitudes, who, regardless alike of the sin and the dan

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sures.

The parks have always presented attractions to Sabbath-breakers of every rank, from noble senators, who display their brilliant equipages in open defiance of the laws they are bound by every obligation to uphold, down to the humblest pedestrians, who can reach those agreeable places of

resort.

"The recent alterations in St. James's Park, have given the public access to a beautiful range of pleasure grounds, which possess many attractions; and it is, therefore, greatly to be deplored, that his Majesty's Commissioners of Woods and Forests, have not thought fit to close these gardens on the Sabbath-day, even during the hours of divine service, though application has been made to them on that subject, from a quarter they were bound to respect. Thus, even at this unfavourable season of the year, it is computed, that from eight to ten thousand persons may be found strolling there in the afternoon of the Lord's day.

"The liquor shops that are to be found in all the populous thoroughfares of this city, become the resorts of myriads, who, without restraint or concealment, obtain those noxious drams which excite them to riot and outrage, or cause them to sink in a state of disgusting insensibility in the public streets, even before the bells have announced the hour of morning prayer.

"The necessary consequence of this is, that before night arrives, the watch-houses are crowded with the miserable victims of Sabbath-breaking and drunkenness, who are kept in durance till the following day, when large and squalid herds are dragged before the magistrates, whose time is principally Occupied on the Monday mornings in correcting the crimes which neglected and desecrated Sabbaths have produced.

"There are published, at the present time, twelve Sunday Newspapers, which circulate at least forty thousand copies, through the agency of about three hundred shops, placarded with all the affairs and follies of the week. It is unnecessary to describe the licentious details and infidel opinions which are to be found in most of these journals. It is probable they have, on each returning Sabbath, two hundred thousand readers! readers of the records of sensuality and crime, gathered into those columns with a baneful industry. These must be, as a magistrate stated before a Committee of the House of Commons, amongst the most productive means by which crime is so fearfully increased.

"Nor can we omit to notice the scenes

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which the evening of God's holy day presents, when the public-houses and tea-gardens are thronged with noisy Sabbathbreakers; when the cattle, which have been purchased at the various lairs in the suburbs in the morning of that day, are crowding through the streets towards the public market, and when Smithfield itself exhibits a scene of uproar and confusion equal to its annual fair; when oaths, shouts, execrations, and cries are heard on every side.

"The Lord's-day is employed för festive purposes by thousands, and these entertainments, from the family party to the cabinet dinner, cause thousands more to violate God's sacred commandment.

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Amongst the lower classes, the milliner, the tailor, the shoe-maker, the hair-dresser, the butcher, and the baker, in untold myriads, are in requisition, to minister to the persons and appetites of the multitude, while the costly festivities which are given by the higher orders, from the private gentleman to the prime minister, require the Sabbath labours of the fishmonger, the poulterer, the fruiterer, and confectioner, and command also all the efforts of their domestics, who thus find the Sabbath not a day of rest, but of unceasing toil.

"Where this ill-timed hospitality does not exist, it is certain that there are thousands who, while they close their shops, and suspend their ordinary pursuits, feel no regard for the sanctity of the day, and entirely neglect its public duties, yielding only to the listlessness of their spirits, and exclaiming, "O what a weariness is it! When will the Sabbath be gone, that we may sell corn, and set forth wheat?"

"Shall I not visit them for these things? saith the Lord. Shall not my soul be avenged on such a nation as this?" The dread of such merited judgments, has urged the Committee of the Christian Instruction Society to deliberate on the best means to correct the evil, and to avert the danger. As the violation of the Sabbath has been regarded, from the earliest periods of our history, as an offence punishable by the laws, and as it is an evil which has been severely reprobated in the proclamations of successive kings, it was natural that some should wish to appeal to the existing statutes. The majority, however, of the Committee, felt that such a reference was questionable in principle, and would prove most ineffective in practice, as the penalties are very slight; and there exists a notorious disinclination on the part of magistrates and their officers to enforce them; a disinclination which is increased by a reference to the manners and usages of the great, who res

disprove this. I will, however, venture to assert, that any man situated as I am, and with my convictions, who did not endeavour to introduce a better system of treatment for insane paupers, would be highly culpable. And indeed, under the impression that any grievous evil exists, the causes of which might be removed, he who should refuse his best efforts for the removal of them would have no pretensions to the character of a good member of society; and if any people on earth stand more in need than others of powerful advocacy, it is the poor of the land who are visited by a mental disease. I cannot therefore but regret that an evil of such magnitude is so little attended to, by those having authority and influence, and abilities to understand it. Unfortunately, numbers are prevented by nervous timidity, from investigating a subject so very repulsive to the feelings. Many shrink from the idea of being thought to know any thing of it; many art totally uninformed upon it; many entertain strange superstitious prejudices up iont; and many think as little of it as they do of their own deaths when in good health; it is then no wonder that it should be left to hands feeble as mine are.

It is a bad cause that admits of no defence; and without any defence, a bad cause may be made to appear worse than it really is. I wish to be informed of what palliating circumstances can be urged in favour of the Wakefield Asylum, I therefore took care to send the July magazine to one of the managers, who politely acknowledged the receipt of it, and early in August I sent to the same gentleman a copy of my last letter; of course I expected to see some remarks in the magazine now before me. There being none I am reminded of what took place some fifteen years ago at the County Asylum at Nottingham. Having written some strictures on that institution for the Monthly Magazine, a suitable answer became a serious matter of discussion in the Committee

room.

It was at last concluded to give none, and treat the writer with silent contempt. Perhaps a like conclusion has been come to by the managers of the Wakefield Assylum.

It is however, probable that the merits of County Asylums, will become matter of legislative discussion; and if the treatment of a malady not necessarily involving any dangerous bodily disease, is the cause of premature death in the proportion of one to three-and-a-half cases, some very important change may soon be determined upon as a legislative measure, and the more so from

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this system of treatment being a complete monopoly, so far as relates to pauper lunatics. If the deaths cleared off the worst cases, and the remainder recovered, they might be considered as a blessing, but unfortunately the worst cases most likely live as incurables; and the same causes, it must seem, which produce a large proportion of deaths, produce also a large proportion of incurables: with more than a fourth of the cases terminating in death, the remainder, it might be expected, would all recover.

We hear much of the "march of intellect," and the rapid increase of useful knowledge in this our age, but in what relates to the treatment of the insane, it appears that the "march of intellect" has been retrograde. Nearly three thousand years ago, when a great king was seized with maniacal despondency, the moral means used for his recovery were judicious and appropriate, and had a good effect. This treatment is a complete contrast to the treatment of pauper lunatics in modern days. Human nature, and the nature of insanity, are the same in all ages and in all ranks, and therefore the principles of cure should be the same for all; but under the County Asylum law, if a poor man be afflicted with mental derangement, he is taken to a large prison, where scarcely any sound can reach his ears, but the heart-appalling cries of others in a like state with himself, and most likely excluded entirely from the sight of any pleasing object.

There is good reason for believing that the first Bethlehem established in Moorfields in the days of one of the Edwards, evinced a more correct knowledge of the disease, and of the best means of cure, than did the last Bethlehem erected in St. George's Fields; and this establishment certainly gave proof of a better judgment on the subject, than the one now under hand at Hanwell and in another part of England a County Asylum is now building, the future inmates of which may have the advantage of seeing the birds that fly over them, but they will be entirely deprived of the sight of any other moving objects. In comparison with these two gloomy abodes, the galleries of Bethlehem must be highly desirable; for notwithstanding Bethlehem is the most noisy Asylum I ever was near, yet the people in the galleries have continually before their eyes a great variety of moving objects; and of all impressions made upon the senses, those which enter by the eye are the most efficacious in the removal of mental illusions.

As I have often said before, it is m