an angel fallen without guilt, than that of a being moulded for mortal
purposes. Who ever could look upon such a beautiful ruin without feeling
the heart sink, and the mind overshadowed with a solemn darkness, as
if conscious of witnessing the still and awful gloom of that disastrous
eclipse of reason, which, alas! is so often doomed never to pass away.

It is difficult to account for the mingled reverence, and terror, and
pity with which we look upon the insane, and it is equally strange that
in this case we approach the temple of the mind with deeper homage,
when we know that the divinity has passed out of it. It must be from a
conviction of this that uncivilized nations venerate deranged persons as
inspired, and in some instance go so far, I believe, as even to pay them
divine worship.

The principle, however, is in our nature: that for which our sympathy is
deep and unbroken never fails to secure our compassion and respect, and
ultimately to excite a still higher class of our moral feelings.

These preliminary observations were suggested to me by the fate of the
beautiful but unfortunate girl, the melancholy, events of whose life
I am about to communicate. I feel, indeed, that in relating them,
I undertake a task that would require a pen of unexampled power and
delicacy. But it is probable that if I remained silent upon a history
at once so true, and so full of sorrow; no other person equally intimate
with its incidents will ever give them to the world. I cannot presume
to detail unhappy Jane's, calamity with the pathos due to a woe so
singularly deep and delicate, or to describe that faithful attachment
which gave her once laughing and ruby lips the white smile of a maniac's
misery. This I cannot do; for who, alas, could ever hope to invest a
dispensation so dark as her's with that rich tone of poetic beauty which