would never have flung away so much money to so foolish a purpose.”  The cost of the building exceeded seventeen thousand pounds.  However the taste of the architecture may be questioned, which was the formal French style of the period, the general effect was imposing.  Including the wings, it presented a frontage of five hundred and forty feet.  Each wing had a small cupola; and, in the centre of the pile rose a larger dome, surmounted by a gilded ball and vane.  The asylum was approached by a broad gravel walk, leading through a garden edged on either side by a stone balustrade, and shaded by tufted trees.  A wide terrace then led to large iron gates,’ over which were placed the two celebrated figures of Raving and Melancholy Madness, executed by the elder Cibber, and commemorated by Pope in the Dunciad, in the well-known lines:—­

“Close to those walls where Folly holds her throne, And laughs to think Monroe would take her down, Where, o’er the gates, by his famed father’s hand, Great Cibber’s brazen, brainless brothers stand.”

Internally, it was divided by two long galleries, one over the other.  These galleries were separated in the middle by iron grates.  The wards on the right were occupied by male patients, on the left by the female.  In the centre of the upper gallery was a spacious saloon, appropriated to the governors of the asylum.  But the besetting evil of the place, and that which drew down the severest censures of the writers above-mentioned, was that this spot,—­which of all others should have been most free from such intrusion—­was made a public exhibition.  There all the loose characters thronged, assignations were openly made, and the spectators diverted themselves with the vagaries of its miserable inhabitants.

Entering the outer gate, and traversing the broad gravel walk before-mentioned, Jack ascended the steps, and was admitted, on feeing the porter, by another iron gate, into the hospital.  Here he was almost stunned by the deafening clamour resounding on all sides.  Some of the lunatics were rattling their chains; some shrieking; some singing; some beating with frantic violence against the doors.  Altogether, it was the most dreadful noise he had ever heard.  Amidst it all, however, there were several light-hearted and laughing groups walking from cell to cell to whom all this misery appeared matter of amusement.  The doors of several of the wards were thrown open for these parties, and as Jack passed, he could not help glancing at the wretched inmates.  Here was a poor half-naked creature, with a straw crown on his head, and a wooden sceptre in his hand, seated on the ground with all the dignity of a monarch on his throne.  There was a mad musician, seemingly rapt in admiration of the notes he was extracting from a child’s violin.  Here was a terrific figure gnashing his teeth, and howling like a wild beast;—­there a lover, with hands clasped together and eyes turned passionately upward.  In this cell was a huntsman, who had fractured his skull while hunting, and was perpetually hallooing after the hounds;—­in that, the most melancholy of all, the grinning gibbering lunatic, the realization of “moody madness, laughing wild.”