atics are lodged in a palace, waited on by skilful male and
female attendants, spend their days in light and airy rooms as clean as
wax-work, have four meals a day, and every reasonable want supplied. I
have no doubt that many a careworn City man, as he has been hurried
backwards and forwards past such places by the train, has often wished
that in some such stately pile he had a niche where he could come of a
night, after the day's work was over, to breathe the fresh air, to tread
the fresh grass, and to smell the fresh flowers. I propose to gratify
this wish,--come with me, respected reader, and in the twinkling of an
eye you will find yourself in Colney Hatch.

It is on Sunday, a day when the asylum is closed to the public. Far and
near this bright sunshiny afternoon there seems resting over all a
Sabbath calm. On the neighbouring rails no trains are running; the doors
of the Station Hotel are shut; no traffic occupies the road and distracts
your attention. You gaze on fields as yet yellow with no ripening corn,
meadows as yet uncarpeted by flowers, trees as yet leafless. Farther off
on the distant ridge we see lofty mansions.

"All bright and glittering in the smokeless air."

Arrived at the gate we ring a bell; the porter opens it to us. We enter
our name in the visitors' book, and descend the gravel slope on which the
asylum is placed. All round is a wide extent of land in which the
lunatics take exercise and occasionally work. There are none outside
now, for it is the hour appointed for Divine service. The door is opened
for us by an attendant, who understands our mission. He takes us
upstairs and we find ourselves seated in a little gallery set apart for
the leading officers of the asylum. Just below us is the pulpit; on a
line with it, but a little farther off, is the reading-desk; opposite us,
at the other end of the room, is the organ. From the floor on which the
pulpit is placed there is a gradually ascending series of benches; on our
right are ranged the female, on our left the male inmates of the house.
It may be that there are some four or five hundred present. Here and
there amongst them you see their well-clad keepers. The lunatics attend
this service willingly, it is a pleasure for them to come, it is a
punishment for them to keep away. On the whole they behave very well,
and, as is often the case outside the walls of lunatic asylums, the
females greatly preponderate. From our gall