I saw the trick at once, and bitterly regretted that I, in common I suppose with others, had been taken in and bit.

Judge of my astonishment, however, when, as I proceeded to read the description of an American lunatic asylum, I found it to be _literatim et verbatim_ taken--stolen--pirated--sentence by sentence and page by page, from my own description of one in the third volume of the first edition of this book, and which I myself took from close observation, when, some years ago, accompanied by Dr.White, I was searching in the Grangegorman Lunatic Asylum and in Swift's for a case of madness arising from disappointment in love.

I was then writing.
"Jane Sinclair," and to the honor of the sex, I have to confess that in neither of those establishments, nor any others either in or about Dublin, could I find such a case.

Here, however, in the Yankee's book, there were neither inverted commas, nor the slightest acknowledgment of the source from which the unprincipled felon had stolen it.
With respect to mad-houses, especially as they were conducted up until within the last thirty years, I must say with truth, that if every fact originating in craft, avarice, oppression, and the most unscrupulous ambition for family wealth and hereditary rank, were known, such a dark series of crime and cruelty would come to light as time public mind could scarcely conceive--nay, as would shock humanity itself.

Nor has this secret system altogether departed from us.