An engagement prevented my reaching the meeting at the College of Physicians, on the third of August, in time to hear the President's address, and though I had something to say on the subjects contained therein, I had not the presumption to offer a criticism without having heard it, while the discussion which followed did not enable me to gather what had been put forward. By the kindness of Dr. Maudsley, however, I have been permitted to read his remarks, and have found them in every way worthy of the high encomiums passed upon them by more than one speaker; yet one or two observations occur to me. Dr. Maudsley is fond of paradoxes, and he startles us with one at the commencement. He tells us that he is convinced of the important part which hereditary predisposition plays in the causation of insanity—that he thinks no person goes mad, save from palpable physical causes, who does not show more or less plainly by his gait, manner, gestures, habits of thought, feeling and actions, that he is predestined to go mad. And yet when he is discussing the advice to be given as to the marriage of people sprung of insane ancestors, he sums up his opinion in these words—“I cannot think science yet has the right to forbid marriage to those in whom some tendency to insanity exists.”