seized
with a shudder of fear and horror. It is only after some reflection that
this is overcome, and feelings of pity mixed with bitterness overcome
us.

To understand the feeling of horror and fear, our reader must follow us
to the Fosse aux Lions (the Lions' Den), one of the yards in La Force so
called. In this are usually placed the most dangerous criminals, whose
ferocity, or the charges against whom, are most serious. At this time
they had been compelled to place there, in consequence of the
alterations making in the prison, many other prisoners. These, although
equally under accusations and awaiting the assizes, were almost all
respectable persons in comparison with the usual occupants of the Lions'
Den. The sky, gloomy, gray, and rainy, cast a dull light over the scene
we are about to depict, and which took place in the centre of the yard
of considerable extent, square, and enclosed by high white walls, having
here and there several grated windows.

At one end of this yard was a narrow door with a wicket; at the other
end, at the entrance to the day-room, a large apartment with a stove in
the centre, surrounded by wooden benches, on which were sitting and
lying several prisoners conversing together. Others, preferring
exercise, were walking up and down the walks, four or five in a row, arm
in arm. It requires the pencil of Salvator or Goya, in order to sketch
the different specimens of physical and moral ugliness, to render in its
hideous fantasy the variety of costumes worn by these men, for the most
part covered with squalid rags,--for being only accused, _i. e._
supposed innocent, they were not clad in the usual uniform of the
central houses. Some, however, wore it; for on their entrance into gaol,
their rags appeared so filthy and infected that, after the usual washing
and bath, they had the frock and trousers of coarse gray cloth, as worn
by the criminals, assigned to them.

A phrenologist would have observed attentively those embrowned and
weather-beaten countenances, those flat or narrow foreheads, those cruel
or crafty looks, the wicked or stupid mouth, the enormous neck,--they
nearly all presented frightful resemblances to brutes. In the cunning
looks of one was seen the perfidious subtlety of the fox, in another was
the sanguinary rapacity of the bird of prey, in a third, the ferocity of
a tiger; and, in all, the animal stupidity of the brute. We will sketch
one or two of the most striking physiogn