owledge of oubliettes and donjons, with the execrable treachery of
stairs suddenly ending in mid-darkness over an abyss. I suppose I
suffered a martyrdom of fear, for I remember upwards of thirty years
afterwards having this very cellar, and my misery in it, brought before
my mind suddenly, with intense vividness, while reading, in Victor
Hugo's Notre Dame, poor Esmeralda's piteous entreaties for deliverance
from her underground prison: "Oh laissez moi sortir! j'ai froid! j'ai
peur! et des betes me montent le long du corps." The latter hideous
detail certainly completes the exquisite misery of the picture. Less
justifiable than banishment to lonely garrets, whence egress was to be
found only by the roof, or dark incarceration in cellars whence was no
egress at all, was another device, adopted to impress me with the evil
of my ways, and one which seems to me so foolish in its cruelty, that
the only amazement is, how anybody entrusted with the care of children
could dream of any good result from such a method of impressing a little
girl not eight years old. There was to be an execution in the town of
some wretched malefactor, who was condemned to be guillotined, and I was
told that I should be taken to see this supreme act of legal
retribution, in order that I might know to what end evil courses
conducted people. We all remember the impressive fable of "Don't Care,"
who came to be hanged, but I much doubt if any of the thousands of young
Britons whose bosoms have been made to thrill with salutary terror at
his untimely end were ever taken by their parents and guardians to see a
hanging, by way of enforcing the lesson. Whether it was ever intended
that I should witness the ghastly spectacle of this execution, or
whether it was expressly contrived that I should come too late, I know
not; it is to be hoped that my doing so was not accidental, but
mercifully intentional. Certain it is, that when I was taken to the
Grande Place the slaughter was over; but I saw the guillotine, and
certain gutters running red with what I was told (whether truly or not)
was blood, and a sad-looking man, busied about the terrible machine,
who, it was said, was the executioner's son; all which lugubrious
objects, no doubt, had their due effect upon my poor childish
imagination and nervous system, with a benefit to my moral nature which
I should think highly problematical.

The experiments tried upon the minds and souls of children by those who
und