It has often struck me that the monotony of occupation is a heavier infliction than the monotony of reflection. The same dull round of duty, which while it demands a certain amount of labour, excludes all opportunity of thought, making man no better than the piston of a steam-engine, is a very frightful and debasing process. Whereas, however much there may be of suffering in solitude, our minds are not imprisoned; our thoughts, unchained and unfettered, stroll far away to pleasant pasturages; we cross the broad blue sea, and tread the ferny mountain-side, and live once more the sunny hours of boyhood; or we build up in imagination a peaceful and happy future.

That the power of fancy and the play of genius are not interrupted by the still solitude of the prison, I need only quote Cervantes, whose immortal work was accomplished during the tedious hours of a captivity, unrelieved by one office of friendship, uncheered by one solitary ray of hope.

Taking this view of the matter, it will 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, is 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 dogged stupidity, are still reasoning beings—what they once were, it is hard to say.

But I take the man who, for some infraction of the law, is suddenly carried away from his home and friends—the man of mind, of reading, and reflection. Imagine him, day after day, beholding the everlasting saddle of mutton—the eternal three chickens, with the tongue in the midst of them; the same travesty of French cookery that pervades the side-dishes—the hot sherry, the sour Moselle: think of him, eating out his days through these, unchanged, unchangeable—with the same cortege of lawyers and lawyers' wives—doctors, male and female—surgeons, subalterns, and, mayhap, attorneys: think of the old jokes he has been hearing from childhood still ringing in his ears, accompanied by the same laugh which he has tracked from its burst in boyhood to its last cackle in dotage: behold him, as he sits amid the same young ladies, in pink and blue, and the same elderly ones, in scarlet and purple; see him, as he watches every sign and pass-word that have marked these dinners for the long term of his sentence, and say if his punishment be not indeed severe.

Then think how edifying the very example of his suffering, as, with pale cheek and lustreless eye—silent, sad, and lonely—he sits there! How powerfully such a warning must speak to others, who, from accident or misfortune, may be momentarily thrown in his society.

The suggestion, I own, will demand a much more ample detail, and considerable modification. Among other precautions, for instance, more than one convict should not be admitted to any table, lest they might fraternize together, and become independent of the company in mutual intercourse, &c.

These may all, however, be carefully considered hereafter: the principle is the only thing I would insist on for the present, and now leave the matter in the hands of our rulers.