The stranger, on entering the long room in which the convalescents were assembled, felt, in the silence of the patients, and in their vague and fantastic movements, that he was in a position where novelty, in general the source of pleasure, was here associated only with pain.  Their startling looks, the absence of interest in some instances, and its intensity in others, at the appearance of strangers, without any intelligent motive in either case, produced a feeling that seemed to bear the character of a disagreeable dream.

“All the patients here,” said his conductor, “are not absolutely in a state of convalescence.  A great number of them are; but we also allow such confirmed lunatics as are harmless to mingle with them.  There is scarcely a profession, or a passion, or a vanity in life, which has not here its representative.  Law, religion, physic, the arts, the sciences, all contribute their share to this melancholy picture gallery.  Avarice, love, ambition, pride, jealousy, having overgrown the force of reason, are here, as its ideal skeletons, wild and gigantic—­fretting, gambolling, moping, grinning, raving, and vaporing—­each wrapped in its own Vision, and indifferent to all the influence of the collateral faculties.  There, now, is a man, moping about, the very picture of stolidity; observe how his heavy head hangs down until his chin rests upon his breastbone, his mouth open and almost dribbling.  That man, sir, so unpoetical and idiotic in appearance, imagines himself the author of Beattie’s ‘Minstrel’ He is a Scotchman, and I shall call him over.”

“Come here, Sandy, speak to this gentleman.”

Sandy, without raising his lack-lustre eye, came over and replied, “Aw—­ay—­’Am the author o’ Betty’s Menstrel;” and having uttered this piece of intelligence, he shuffled across the room, dragging one foot after the other, at about a quarter of a minute per step.  Never was poor Beattie so libellously represented.

“Do you see that round-faced, good-humored looking man, with a decent frieze coat on?” said their conductor.  “He’s a wealthy and respectable farmer from the county of Kilkenny, who imagines that he is Christ.  His name is Rody Rafferty.”

“Come here, Rody.”

Rody came over, and looking at the stranger, said, “Arra, now, do you know who I am?  Troth, I go bail you don’t.”

“No,” replied the stranger, “I do not; but I hope you will tell me.”

“I’m Christ,” replied Rody; “and, upon my word, if you don’t get out o’ this, I’ll work a miracle on you.”

“Why,” asked the stranger, “what will you do?”

“Troth, I’ll turn you into a blackin’ brush, and polish my shoes wid you.  You were at Barney’s death, too.”

The poor man had gone deranged, it seemed, by the violent death of his only child—­a son.

“There’s another man,” said the conductor; “that little fellow with the angry face.  He is a shoemaker, who went mad on the score of humanity.  He took a strong feeling of resentment against all who had flat feet, and refused to make shoes for them.”