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In W-- were seven very crazy, and above twenty simple, insane, and idiotic. One, who was noisy, was in a small building in a field. The condition of all was degraded and exposed. In P--, the insane in the jail were subject to great miseries. Many in the county were harshly confined; some wandering at liberty, often dangerous to the safety of all they met. The twelve counties next visited afforded corresponding examples. The nine next traversed had fewer insane, and fewer, in proportion to whole numbers, in chains. In H--, one case claimed special sympathy. Adjacent to a farm-house was a small shanty, slightly constructed of thin boards, in which lies an old feeble man, with blanched hair, not clad either for protection or decency; "fed," as said a poor neighbor very truly, "fed like the hogs, and treated worse." He is exposed to the scorching heats of' summer, and pinching cold of' the inclement winter; no kind voice cheers him, no sympathizing friend seeks to mitigate his sufferings. He is an outcast, a crazy man, almost at the door of his once cheerful, comfortable home. I pass by without detail nearly one hundred examples of insane men and women in filthy cells, chained and hobbled, together with many idiots and epileptics wandering abroad. Some were confined in low, damp, dark cellars; some wasted their wretched existence in dreary dungeons, deserted and neglected. It would be fruitless to attempt describing the time sufferings of these unhappy beings for a day even. What must he the accumulation of the pains and woes of years, consigned to prisons and poorhouses, to cells and dungeons, enduring every variety of privation -- helpless, deserted of kindred, tortured by fearful delusions, and suffering indescribable pains and abuses. These are no tales of fiction. I believe that there is no imaginable form of severity, of cruelty, of neglect, of every sort of ill-management for mind and body, to which I have not seen the insane subject in all our country, excepting the three sections already defined. As a general rule, ignorance procures the largest measure of these shocking results; but while of late years much is accomplished, and more is proposed, by far the largest part of those who suffer remain unrelieved, and must do so, except the general government unites to assist the several States in this work.

In Maryland, large numbers are at this hour in the lowest state of misery to which the insane can be reduced. At four different periods I have looked into the condition of many cases, counting hundreds there. Chains, and want, and sorrows, abound for the insane poor in both the western and eastern districts, but especially in the western.

In Delaware, the same history is only to be repeated with this variation: as the numbers are fewer, so is the aggregate of misery less.

In the District of Columbia, the old and the new jails, and the almshouses, had, till very recently, their black, horrible histories. I witnessed abuses in some of these in 1838, in 1845, and since, from which every sense recoils. At present, most of these evils are mitigated in this immediate vicinity, but by no means relieved to the extent that justice and humanity demand.

In Virginia, very many cases of extreme suffering now exist. The most observing and humane of the medical profession have repeatedly expressed the desire for additional hospital provision for the insane. Like cases of great distress to those in Maryland and Pennsylvania were found in the years 1844 and 1845. In every county through which I passed were the insane to be found -- sometimes chained, sometimes wandering free. In the large, populous poorhouse near U-- were spectacles the most offensively loathsome. Utter neglect and squallid wretchedness surrounded the insane. The estimate of two thousand insane idiots and epileptic patients in this State is thought to be below the actual number. The returns in 1840 were manifestly incorrect.

In the report upon the Western State Hospital of Virginia, at Staunton, for the year 1847, Dr. Stribling feelingly remarks upon the very insufficient means at command for the relief of the insane poor throughout the State, "We predicted," he says, "that during the present year, those seeking the benefits of this institution would far exceed our ability to receive. This anticipation, we regret to say, has been painfully realized, and we are now called upon to report the fact that within the last nine months one hundred and twenty-three applications have been received, whilst only thirty-nine could be admitted. What has become of the eighty-four, it is impossible for us to report." I regret to say there is but one conclusion deducible from statement; the rejected patients are suffering privations and miseries in different degrees in the narrow rooms or cells of poorhouses, or in the equally wretched sheds, stalls, or pens, attached to private dwellings, while some have been temporarily detained, for security, in the jails. The laws of Virginia forbid a protracted detention of the insane in the county prisons, at this period. Formerly, I have traced the most cruel sufferings in the compartments, uncleansed and unventilated, and in the still more neglected dungeons, into which the insane have been cast. The hospital physicians report patients often sent to their care painfully encumbered with cords and chains.