structive one. For several weeks all the skill

and all the effort of a great system of police have utterly failed to connect any one with a series of atrocious murders, committed not in solitary places, but in one of the most densely populated districts of London; not in the recesses of some lonely wood, but on the public streets of the largest city in the world. The murderer has succeeded in avoiding sus picion during all this time. No doubt the

almost certain. But something further must first emerge before they can be of use in con necting a criminal with the crimes. So far from giving a clew, they would seem to con spire to baffle the police, who, to judge from indiscriminate arrests and wholesale search, are not yet on the track.

It may not be amiss to consider for a little some of the peculiar features of these mur ders, in view of the theory which has been

very immensity of the population may be an put forward and widely favored, that they element of safety to the guilty person in such are the handiwork of a homicidal maniac. Without at all prejudging the case, we may a case. If he once get clear of the imme diate vicinity of his victim, concealment and discuss shortly how far the facts give color escape are obviously more easy amid such a to this explanation, and how far they con throng, even should he have been momen sist with alleged instances of this mono tarily seen in suspicious circumstances. But mania, — the monomanie tneurtrihre of the should no one have seen the deed, and should French alienists. no one have seen the murderer near the spot, In so far as possible we shall, in these few even for a moment, it is not unlike the pro remarks, avoid touching on the question of verbial looking for a needle in a haystack to the reality or non-reality of what is known begin to seek for him among some hundreds by the various names of Affective Insanity, of thousands of men, not to mention the Moral Mania, and, in the language of Pinel, watching of all the countless egresses from who first maintained its existence, Manie {on the neighborhood. Monomanie*) sans aV/ire. This derangement Yet, after making due allowance for these is defined by Pritchard as consisting in " a considerations, it is surprising that, in the morbid perversion of the natural feelings, present cases, there has been a failure to dis affections, inclinations, temper, habits, and cover the perpetrator or perpetrators of the moral dispositions, without any notable deeds; for they have not been ordinary mur lesion of the intellect or knowing and ders. They have not been simple in their reasoning faculties, and particularly without character or bare of particulars. Not only any maniacal hallucination." The reality of are the details as revolting as any which the such a state has been maintained, though records of medical jurisprudence contain; with certain qualifications, by such distin they are also marked by certain characteris guished alienists as Pinel, Esquirol, Georget, tics which at first sight would seem to afford Gale, Rush, Pritchard, Ray, and Professor a peculiarly strong likelihood of the crimes Maudsley. Yet many call that reality in being cleared up. The very number of the question, and deny the existence of an irre crimes, the almost exact repetition of the sistible criminal impulse in minds otherwise murderer's procedure in each, the similarity sound. " Public writers and lawyers," says of hour and circumstances, the elaborate mu Dr. Maudsley, " naturally jealous of the ap tilation of the bodies, the selection of victims plication of the doctrine to excuse crime, from one sex and class only, and the like, — have rejected and reviled it as a dangerous these things might not unnaturally be ex and absurd legal crotchet; having been prob ably the more moved to do so because they pected to give some clew. Yet this abun dance of circumstances gives none. That perceive that, if it be admitted, they will be all these facts will be strong links in the impotent, by reason of their ignorance of in chain of circumstantial evidence hereafter is sanity, to put a proper check upon its appli- 1