most elegant, beautiful, and accomplished lady, about
twenty-two years of age, had been married about two months to an elegant,
polished, and affluent young man, and it was well known to be a love-match
on both sides. She suddenly became melancholy, and yet not to so great a
degree, but that she could command herself to do the honours of her table
with grace and apparent ease. After many days intreaty, she at length told
me, that she thought her marrying her husband had made him unhappy; and
that this idea she could not efface from her mind day or night. I withstood
her being confined, as some had advised, and proposed a sea-voyage to her,
with expectation that the sickness, as well as change of objects, might
remove the insane hallucination, by introducing other energetic ideas; this
was not complied with, but she travelled about England with her friends and
her husband for many months, and at length perfectly recovered, and is now
I am informed in health and spirits.

These cases are related to shew the utility of endeavouring to investigate
the maniacal idea, or hallucination; as it may not only acquaint us with
the probable designs of the patient, from whence may be deduced the
necessity of confinement; but also may some time lead to the most effectual
plan of cure.

I received good information of the truth of the following case, which was
published a few years ago in the newspapers. A young farmer in
Warwickshire, finding his hedges broke, and the sticks carried away during
a frosty season, determined to watch for the thief. He lay many cold hours
under a hay-stack, and at length an old woman, like a witch in a play,
approached, and began to pull up the hedge; he waited till she had tied up
her bottle of sticks, and was carrying them off, that he might convict her
of the theft, and then springing from his concealment, he seized his prey
with violent threats. After some altercation, in which her load was left
upon the ground, she kneeled upon her bottle of sticks, and raising her
arms to heaven beneath the bright moon then at the full, spoke to the
farmer already shivering with cold, "Heaven grant, that thou never mayest
know again the blessing to be warm." He complained of cold all the next
day, and wore an upper coat, and in a few days another, and in a fortnight
took to his bed, always saying nothing made him warm, he covered himself
with very many blankets, and had a sieve over his face, as he lay; and from
thi