A recent writer seems to have been struck by these curious analogies.  Mr. Haslam, in his work on “Sound Mind,” says p. 90, “There seems to be a considerable similarity between the morbid state of the instruments of voluntary motion (that is, the body), and certain affections of the mental powers (that is, the mind).  Thus, paralysis has its counterpart in the defects of recollection, where the utmost endeavour to remember is ineffectually exerted. Tremor may be compared with incapability of fixing the attention, and this involuntary state of muscles ordinarily subjected to the will, also finds a parallel where the mind loses its influence in the train of thought, and becomes subject to spontaneous intrusions; as may be exemplified in reveries, dreaming, and some species of madness.”

Thus one philosopher discovers the analogies of the mind with the body, and another of the body with the mind.  Can we now hesitate to believe that such analogies exist—­and, advancing one step farther, trace in this reciprocal influence that a part of the soul is the body, as the body becomes a part of the soul?  The most important truth remains undivulged, and ever will in this mental pharmacy; but none is more clear than that which led to the view of this subject, that in this mutual intercourse of body and mind the superior is often governed by the inferior; others think the mind is more wilfully outrageous than the body.  Plutarch, in his essays, has a familiar illustration, which he borrows from some philosopher more ancient than himself:—­“Should the body sue the mind before a court of judicature for damages, it would be found that the mind would prove to have been a ruinous tenant to its landlord.”  The sage of Cheronaea did not foresee the hint of Descartes and the discovery of Camus, that by medicine we may alleviate or remove the diseases of the mind; a practice which indeed has not yet been pursued by physicians, though the moralists have been often struck by the close analogies of the MIND with the BODY!  A work by the learned Dom Pernetty, La connoissance de l’homme moral par celle de l’homme physique, we are told is more fortunate in its title than its execution; probably it is one of the many attempts to develope this imperfect and obscured truth, which hereafter may become more obvious, and be universally comprehended.

PSALM-SINGING.

The history of Psalm-singing is a portion of the history of the Reformation,—­of that great religious revolution which separated for ever, into two unequal divisions, the establishment of Christianity.  It has not, perhaps, been remarked that psalm-singing, or metrical psalms, degenerated into those scandalous compositions which, under the abused title of hymns, are now used by some sects.[300] These are evidently the last disorders of that system of psalm-singing