more frequent scourges. And most of all, or with most darkness in its
train, comes the sickness of the brain--lunacy--which, visiting nearly
one thousand in every million, must, in every populous nation, make
many ruins in each particular day. 'Babylon in ruins,' says a great
author, 'is not so sad a sight as a human soul overthrown by lunacy.'
But there is a sadder even than _that_,--the sight of a family-ruin
wrought by crime is even more appalling. Forgery, breaches of trust,
embezzlement, of private or public funds--(a crime sadly on the
increase since the example of Fauntleroy, and the suggestion of its
great feasibility first made by him)--these enormities, followed too
often, and countersigned for their final result to the future happiness
of families, by the appalling catastrophe of suicide, must naturally,
in every wealthy nation, or wherever property and the modes of property
are much developed, constitute the vast majority of all that come under
the review of public justice. Any of these is sufficient to make
shipwreck of all peace and comfort for a family; and often, indeed, it
happens that the desolation is accomplished within the course of one
revolving sun; often the whole dire catastrophe, together with its
total consequences, is both accomplished and made known to those whom
it chiefly concerns within one and the same hour. The mighty Juggernaut
of social life, moving onwards with its everlasting thunders, pauses
not for a moment to spare--to pity--to look aside, but rushes forward
for ever, impassive as the marble in the quarry--caring not for whom it
destroys, for the how many, or for the results, direct and indirect,
whether many or few. The increasing grandeur and magnitude of the
social system, the more it multiplies and extends its victims, the more
it conceals them; and for the very same reason: just as in the Roman
amphitheatres, when they grew to the magnitude of mighty cities, (in
some instances accommodating four hundred thousand spectators, in many
a fifth part of that amount,) births and deaths became ordinary events,