n and equal scale; and the only difference existing between them, but
one that was immediately perceptible to the eye, was the superfluous
abundance of windows in the former, and their deficiency in the latter.
A moral agency had most probably prompted the architect to the
distinction here hit upon--and he felt, doubtless, in admitting free
access to the light in the house of justice, and in excluding it almost
entirely from that of punishment, that he had recognised the proprieties
of a most excellent taste and true judgment. These apertures, clumsily
wrought in the logs of which the buildings were made, added still more
to their generally uncouth appearance. There was yet, however, another
marked difference between the courthouse and jail, which we should not
omit to notice. The former had the advantage of its neighbor, in being
surmounted by a small tower or cupola, in which a bell of moderate size
hung suspended, permitted to speak only on such important occasions as
the opening of court, sabbath service, and the respective anniversaries
of the birthday of Washington and the Declaration of Independence. This
building, thus distinguished above its fellows, served also all the
purposes of a place of worship, whenever some wandering preacher found
his way into the settlement; an occurrence, at the time we write, of
very occasional character. To each of the four vast walls of the jail,
in a taste certainly not bad, if we consider the design and character of
the fabric, but a single window was allotted--that too of the very
smallest description for human uses, and crossed at right angles with
rude and slender bars of iron, the choicest specimens of workmanship
from the neighboring smithy. The distance between each of these four
equally important buildings was by no means inconsiderable, if we are
required to make the scale for our estimate, that of the cramped and
diminished limits accorded to like places in the cities, where men and
women appear to increase in due proportion as the field lessens upon
which they must encounter in the great struggle for existence. Though
neighbors in every substantial respect, the four fabrics were most
uncharitably remote, and stood frowning gloomily at one
another--scarcely relieved of the cheerless and sombre character of
their rough outsides, even when thus brightly illuminated by the glare
thrown upon them by the several blazes, flashing out upon the scene from
the twin lamps in front