be at once perceived how much
more severe a penalty solitary confinement must be, to the man of
narrow mind and limited resources of thought, than to him of
cultivated understanding and wider range of mental exercise. In the
one case, it is a punishment of the most terrific kind--and nothing
can equal that awful lethargy of the soul, that wraps a man as in a
garment, shrouding him from the bright world without, and leaving him
nought save the darkness of his gloomy nature to brood over. In the
other, there is something soothing amid all the melancholy of the
state, in the unbroken soaring of thought, that, lifting man above the
cares and collisions of daily life, bear him far away to the rich
paradise of his mind-made treasures--peopling space with images of
beauty--and leave him to dream away existence amid the scenes and
features he loved to gaze on.

Now, to turn for the moment from this picture, let us consider whether
our government is wise in this universal application of a punishment,
which, while it operates so severely in one case, may really be
regarded as a boon in the other.

The healthy peasant, who rises with the sun, and breathes the free air
of his native hills, may and will feel all the infliction of
confinement, which, while it chains his limbs, stagnates his
faculties. Not so the sedentary and solitary man of letters. Your cell
becomes _his_ study: the window may be somewhat narrower--the lattice,
that was wont to open to the climbing honeysuckle, may now be barred
with its iron stanchions; but he soon forgets this. "His mind to him a
palace is," wherein he dwells at peace. Now, to put them on something
of a par, I have a suggestion to make to the legislature, which I
shall condense as briefly as possible. Never sentence your man of
education, whatever his offence, to solitary confinement; but condemn
him to dine out, in Dublin, for seven or fourteen years--or, in murder
cases, for the term of his natural life. For slight offences, a week's
dinners, and a few evening parties might be sufficient--while old
offenders and bad cases, might be sent to the north side of the city.

It may be objected to this--that insanity, which so often occurs in
the one case, would supervene in the other; but I rather think not. My
own experience could show many elderly people of both sexes, long
inured to this state, who have only fallen into a sullen and apathetic
fatuity; but who, bating deafness and a look of dogg