Notes of a Recent Visit to Some of the American Asylums

?are morally suggestive of great undertakings. Hence the social institutions of America are for the most part conceived upon a large and extensive scale. Their public buildings, their street architecture, the style of their principal cities, have a noble character, breathing rather an air of ostentatious monarchy than of simple republicanism. The progress of the Americans in science and literature has been signal; and in that department of the profession to which this journal is dedicated, they have evinced an energy worthy of a free and enlightened people. At this moment there are philosophical works publishing in America that would do honour to Great Britain. And to what is this to be attributed but to that spirit of liberty which emancipates their philosophy from scholastic chains, which in European universities too often restrict the independence of the inquiring mind. Liberty and philosophy must ever go hand-in-hand; without intellectual liberty there can be no progression of thought?no positive advancement of knowledge. The liberal scale upon which all the great institutions of America are founded, seems to outstrip European competition. Their hospitals for the sick are admirably designed and organized?nay, we believe that, in many respects, they are even better managed than many in this country. Their architectural designs are vast and comprehensive. Their wards, day-rooms, sleeping-rooms, baths, kitchens, &c., are lofty and spacious, and well arranged; and so, likewise, we gather from the various reports which we have from time to time analyzed, that their lunatic asylums are admirably constructed, and managed upon the best and most enlightened principles. Plaving paid recently a visit to the United States, and being much interested in the subject of insanity, we inspected some of the principal asylums in that country, a short account of which we purpose now giving. Arriving in the state of New York, we found nearly in its centre the