Rolfe.
"My DEAR SIR--In compliance with your wish, and Lady Bassett's, I send
you a few desultory remarks on what I see here.
"1st. The lines,
'Great wits to madness nearly are allied, And thin partitions do their
bonds divide,'
are, in my opinion, exaggerated and untrue. Taking the people here as a
guide, the insane in general appear to be people with very little
brains, and enormous egotism.
"My next observation is, that the women have far less imagination than
the men; they cannot even realize their own favorite delusions. For
instance, here are two young ladies, the Virgin Mary and the Queen of
England. How do they play their parts? They sit aloof from all the
rest, with their noses in the air. But gauge their imaginations; go
down on one knee, or both, and address them as a saint and a queen;
they cannot say a word in accordance; yet they are cunning enough to
see they cannot reply in character, so they will not utter a syllable
to their adorers. They are like the shop-boys who go to a masquerade as
Burleigh or Walsingham, and when you ask them who is Queen Bess's
favorite just now, blush, and look offended, and pass sulkily on.
"The same class of male lunatics can speak in character; and this
observation has made me doubt whether philosophers are not mistaken in
saying that women generally have more imagination than men.
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