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The master of one of the best-regulated almshouses, namely, that of Plymouth, where every arrangement shows that the comfort of the sick, the aged, and the infirm is suitably cared for, and the amendment of the unworthy is studied and advanced, said, as we stood opposite a latticed stall where was confined a madman, that the hours of the day were few when the whole household was not distracted from employment by screams and turbulent stampings, and every form of violence which the voice or muscular force could produce. This unfortunate being was one of the "returned incurables," since whose last admission to the almshouse they were no longer secure of peace for the aged or decency for the young. It was morally impossible to do justice to the sane and insane in such improper vicinity to each other. The conviction is continually deepened that hospitals are the only places where insane persons can be at once humanely and properly controlled. Poorhouses converted into madhouses cease to effect the purposes for which they were established, and instead of being asylums for the aged, the homeless, and the friendless, and places of refuge for orphaned or neglected childhood, are transformed into perpetual bedlams.

This crying evil and abuse of institutions is not confined to our alms-houses. The warden of a populous prison near this metropolis, populous not with criminals only, but with the insane in almost every stage of insanity, and the idiotic in descending states from silly and simple, to helpless and speechless, has declared that, since their admission under the Revised Statutes of 1835, page 382, "the prison has often more resembled the infernal regions than any place on earth!" And, what with the excitement inevitably produced by the crowded state of the prisons and multiplying causes, not subject to much modification, there has been neither peace nor order one hour of the twenty-four. If ten were quiet, the residue were probably raving. Almost without interval might, and must, these be heard, blaspheming and furious, and to the last degree impure and indecent, uttering language from which the base and the profligate have turned shuddering aside and the abandoned have shrunk abashed. I myself, with many beside, can bear sad witness to these things.

Such cases of transcendent madness have not been few in this prison. Admission for a portion of them, not already having been discharged as incurable from the State Hospital, has been sought with importunity and pressed with obstinate perseverance, often without success or advantage; and it has not been till application has followed application, and petition succeeded petition, that the judge of probate, absolutely wearied by the "continual coming," has sometimes granted warrants for removal. It cannot be overlooked that in this delay or refusal was more of just deliberation than hardness; for it is well known that, in the present crowded state of the hospital, every new patient displaces one who has for a longer or a shorter time received the benefit of that noble institution.

A few months since, through exceeding effort, an inmate of this prison, whose contaminating influence for two years had been the dread and curse of all persons who came within her sphere, whether incidentally or compelled by imprisonment, or by daily duty, was removed to Worcester. She had set at defiance all efforts for controlling the contaminating violence of her excited passions; every variety of blasphemous expression, every form of polluting phraseology, was poured forth in torrents, sweeping away every decent thought, and giving reality to that blackness of darkness which, it is said, might convert a heaven into hell. There, day after day, month after month, were the warden and his own immediate household; the subordinate officials, and casual visitors; young women detained as witnesses; men, women, and children, waiting trial or under sentence; debtors and criminals; the neighborhood, and almost the whole town, subjected to this monstrous offence --and no help! the law permitted her there, and there she remained till July last, when, after an application to the judge so determined that all refusal was refused, a warrant was granted for her transfer to the State Hospital. I saw her there two weeks since. What a change! Decent, orderly, neatly dressed, capable of light employment, partaking with others her daily meals. Decorously, and without any manifestation of passion, moving about, not a rational woman by any means, but no longer a nuisance, rending off her garments and tainting the moral atmosphere with every pollution, she exhibited how much could be done for the most unsettled and apparently the most hopeless cases by being placed in a situation adapted to the wants and necessities of her condition. Transformed from a very Tisiphone, she is now a controllable woman. But this most wonderful change may not be lasting. She is liable to be returned to the prison, as have been others, and then no question but in a short time like scenes will distract and torment all in a vicinity so much to be dreaded.