He led them next to that quarter where those reside who, as they are not dangerous to themselves or others, enjoy a certain degree of freedom, according to the state of their distemper.

Harley had fallen behind his companions, looking at a man who was making pendulums with bits of thread and little balls of clay.  He had delineated a segment of a circle on the wall with chalk, and marked their different vibrations by intersecting it with cross lines.  A decent-looking man came up, and smiling at the maniac, turned to Harley, and told him that gentleman had once been a very celebrated mathematician.  “He fell a sacrifice,” said he, “to the theory of comets; for having, with infinite labour, formed a table on the conjectures of Sir Isaac Newton, he was disappointed in the return of one of those luminaries, and was very soon after obliged to be placed here by his friends.  If you please to follow me, sir,” continued the stranger, “I believe I shall be able to give you a more satisfactory account of the unfortunate people you see here than the man who attends your companions.”

Harley bowed, and accepted his offer.

The next person they came up to had scrawled a variety of figures on a piece of slate.  Harley had the curiosity to take a nearer view of them.  They consisted of different columns, on the top of which were marked South-sea annuities, India-stock, and Three per cent. annuities consol.  “This,” said Harley’s instructor, “was a gentleman well known in Change Alley.  He was once worth fifty thousand pounds, and had actually agreed for the purchase of an estate in the West, in order to realise his money; but he quarrelled with the proprietor about the repairs of the garden wall, and so returned to town, to follow his old trade of stock-jobbing a little longer; when an unlucky fluctuation of stock, in which he was engaged to an immense extent, reduced him at once to poverty and to madness.  Poor wretch! he told me t’other day that against the next payment of differences he should be some hundreds above a plum.”

“It is a spondee, and I will maintain it,” interrupted a voice on his left hand.  This assertion was followed by a very rapid recital of some verses from Homer.  “That figure,” said the gentleman, “whose clothes are so bedaubed with snuff, was a schoolmaster of some reputation:  he came hither to be resolved of some doubts he entertained concerning the genuine pronunciation of the Greek vowels.  In his highest fits, he makes frequent mention of one Mr. Bentley.

“But delusive ideas, sir, are the motives of the greatest part of mankind, and a heated imagination the power by which their actions are incited:  the world, in the eye of a philosopher, may be said to be a large madhouse.”  “It is true,” answered Harley, “the passions of men are temporary madnesses; and sometimes very fatal in their effects.

From Macedonia’s madman to the Swede.”