The Monomaniac of Love. A Study in the Pathology of
Character. (Provost and Co.)—We have taken some pains to discover the object of this book, but with limited success ; and the preface, in which the author's design is elaborately set forth, fails to give us much assist- awe in our quest. The writer undertakes a task which he admits to be " notoriously difficult,"—" to imaginatively portray madness see- cessfully." " As, according to the late Sir Henry Holland, one of the clearest indications that it is possible to have of a person having become insane, is his displaying an absolute inversion of his ordinary thoughts and feelings ; so the hero is depicted in that state, as show- ing as complete an inversion of his ordinary frame of mind, as a boy standing on his head shows a complete inversion of the ordinary posi- tion of his bodily frame." The book is not pleasant reading. Its morality is more than questionable ; and though the crazy vagaries of the hero may occasionally excite a smile, and his theory of " spirited gravitation" and the "reverberation of ancestral experiences "— a burlesque parody on Darwinism—is not without humour ; still, the story of a maniac who, after passing through various phases: of mad- ness, ends at last by death in "a terrific flash of lightning," cannot be recommended, either for instruction or wholesome recreation. The author, who is capable of better things, wonld do well, we think, to devote his abilities, for the future, to more profitable purpose.
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