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and kindness. He brought the proposal before the Society of Friends, of which he It is generally assumed that England, like was a member, in the spring of 1792. The her continental neighbors, owes her entry on funds were provided, and in 1796 the York the paths of lunacy reform at the end of last Retreat was definitely opened. The Retreat and the beginning of this century to the was conducted from the beginning on the influence of Phillipe Pinel, who gradually principle that the utmost practicable degree abolished the regime of " stripes, fetters and of gentleness, tenderness and attention to the darkness " at the Bicetre, and whose statue comforts and feelings of the insane was, in still confronts the the language of the tourist at the gates "British Review," of the Salpêtrière in "in the first place due Paris. This is, how to them as human ever, a mistake. Our beings, and in the present system of next place infinitely the most promising asylum administra means of effecting tion is of purely Eng lish origin. The writtheir recovery." Me chanical restraint was ings of Swift and reduced to an alto Defoe did something gether subsidiary to create a public de place in the regimen mand for lunacy re of the asylum; and form. But the ener the emotions which gizing impulse came the news inspired in from William Tuke, the breasts of patients the founder of the were well described York Retreat, and the by an unfortunate grandfather of Dr. man who had nearly Hack Tuke, one of the lost the use of his most distinguished DR. HACK TUKE. limbs from being alienists of the chained in another present day. In asylum and who, on being asked by his 1791 the friends of a patient who was con fined in the infamous York Lunatic Asy friends after a short residence in the Retreat lum, of which we have already given a what he called the place, exclaimed, " Eden, sketch, desiring to visit her, were refused Eden!" In 1813 Mr. Samuel Tuke published a admission, and suspicion was aroused as to the treatment to which she was being " Description of the Retreat." This volume subjected. The incident was brought to was regarded as an attack upon the York Lunatic Asylum. A letter in reply to it, the knowledge of William Tuke, a promi signed "Evigilabor," but really proceeding nent citizen of York, and in conjunction from the superintendent of that institution, with a spectacle which he witnessed in St. appeared in the papers. A long and heated Luke's Hospital, London, of lunatics lying correspondence followed. Then a charge on stones and in chains, it filled him with an ardent desire to erect an institution where of illtreating a patient was made against the nothing should be concealed, and where superintendent of the York Asylum by Mr. patients should be treated with consideration Godfrey Higgins, a magistrate. The select LUNACY REFORM IN ENGLAND.