or at least their German cousins and Belgian brothers-in-law; and moreover, have tasted the bacon, which only wants fat to be streaky. But here is a livelier sample of a pig, who seems to have had a notion of Lynch Law.

"As we were riding along this morning, I observed a little incident between two youthful pigs, which were so very human as to be inexpressibly comical and grotesque at the time, though I dare say in telling, it is tame enough.

"One young gentleman (a very delicate porker with several straws sticking about his nose, betokening recent investigations in a dunghill) was walking deliberately on, profoundly thinking, when suddenly his brother, who was lying in a miry hole unseen by him, rose up immediately before his startled eyes, ghostly with damp mud. Never was a pig's whole mass of blood so turned. He started back at least three feet, gazed for a moment, and then shot off as hard as ever he could go: his excessively little tail vibrating with speed and terror like a distracted pendulum. But before he had gone very far, he began to reason with himself as to the nature of this frightful appearance; and as he reasoned, he relaxed his speed by gradual degrees, until at last he stopped, and faced about. There was his brother with the mud upon him glazing in the sun, yet staring out of the very same hole, perfectly amazed at his proceedings. He was no sooner assured of this, and he assured himself so carefully, that one may almost say he shaded his eyes with his hand to see the better, than he came back at a round trot, pounced upon him, and summarily took off a piece of his tail, as a caution to him to be careful what he was about for the future, and never to play tricks with his family any more."

But as usual, Boz was not allowed exclusively to please the pigs; and being hunted all along shore, he was obliged, like a deer fort couru, to take to the water, and was carried to the Long Island Jail, by a boat belonging to the establishment, and rowed by a crew of prisoners "dressed in a striped uniform of black and buff, in which they looked like faded tigers." Not a bad retinue, by the way, for a black and white Lion. In the Gaol, the Madhouse, and the Refuge for the Destitute, he again found a temporary repose, but even these retreats becoming at last uncomfortably crowded, he set off by railway for Philadelphia, with a longing eye, of course, to its Solitary Prison. But that he did not enjoy much unpopularity on this journey, we may guess, when the travelling in the same carriage with Boz was too much PART II.

6

for even Foxite taciturnity, and a Friend made such a desperate effort, as follows, to become an Acquaintance:

"A mild and modest young Quaker, who opened the discourse by informing me, in a grave whisper, that his grandfather was the inventor of cold-drawn castor-oil. I mention the circumstance here, thinking it probable that this is the first occasion on which the valuable medicine in question was ever used as a conversational aperient."

The genuine drab color of this anecdote is as true in tone as the tints of Claude, and gives a renewed faith in the artist. The following picture seems equally faithful, though reminding us of some of the Author's fancy pieces. Look at it, gentle reader, and then cry with us, "God forgive the inventor of the system of burying criminals alive in stone coffins!"

"The first man I saw was seated at his loom at work. He had been there six years, and was to remain, I think, three more. He had been convicted as a receiver of stolen goods, but denied his guilt, and said he had been hardly dealt by. It was his second offence.

"He stopped his work when we went in, took off his spectacles, and answered freely to everything that was said to him, but always with a strange kind of pause first, and in a low thoughtful voice. He wore a paper hat of his own making, and was pleased to have it noticed and commended. He had very ingeniously manufactured a sort of Dutch clock from some disregarded odds and ends; and his vinegar-bottle served for the pendulum. Seeing me interested in this contrivance, he looked up at it with a good deal of pride, and said that he had been thinking of improving it, and that he hoped the hammer and a little piece of broken glass beside it 'would play music ere long.'

"He smiled as I looked at these contrivances to while away the time; but when I looked from them to him, I saw that his lip trembled, and could have counted the beating of his heart. I forgot how it came about, but some allusion was made to his having a wife. He shook his head at the word, turned aside, and covered his face with his hands.

"But you are resigned now!' said one of the gentlemen, after a short pause, during which he had resumed his former manner.

"Oh yes, oh yes! I am resigned to it.'

"And are a better man, you think?'

"Well, I hope so: I'm sure I may be.'

"And time goes pretty quickly?"

"Time is very long, gentlemen, between these four walls!'

"He gazed about him-Heaven only knows how wearily! as he said these words; and in the act of doing so, fell into a strange stare, as if he

had forgotten something. A moment afterwards he sighed heavily, put on his spectacles, and resumed his work."

"On the haggard face of every man among these prisoners the same expression sat. I know not what to liken it to. It had something of that strained attention which we see upon the faces of the blind and deaf, mingled with a kind of horror, as though they had all been secretly terrified. In every little chamber that I entered, and at every grate through which I looked, I seemed to see the same appalling countenance. It lives in my memory with the fascination of a remarkable picture. Parade before my eyes a hundred men, with one of them newly released from this solitary suffering, and I would point him out."

"That it makes the senses dull, and by degrees impairs the bodily faculties, I am quite sure. I remarked to those who were with me in this very establishment at Philadelphia, that the criminals who had been there long were deaf."

Of course they were; and all more or less advanced towards a state (to adapt a new word) of idiosyncrasy. Again we say, Heaven forgive the inventors of such a course of slow mental torture! who could reduce a fellow-creature to become such a clock-maker! The truth is, no Solitary System is consonant with humanity or Christianity. Whenever there shall be persons too good for this world, they may have a right to thus excommunicate those who are too bad for it—but as Porson said, not till then!

Nevertheless to a gentleman mobbed, elbowed, jammed, stared at, and shouted after, a few hours in such a quiet hermitage would be a relief: nay, Boz tells us that it was once found endurable for a much longer term, by a voluntary prisoner, who, unable to resist the bottle, applied, as a favor, for a solitary cell. The Board refused, and recommended total abstinence and the long pledge, but the toper, to make sure of temperance, entreated to be put in the stone jug.

"He came again, and again, and again, and was so very earnest and importunate, that at last they took counsel together, and said, 'He will certainly qualify himself for admission, if we reject him any more. Let us shut him up. He will soon be glad to go away, and then we shall get rid of him.' So they made him sign a statement, which would prevent his ever sustaining an action for false imprisonment, to the effect that his in

carceration was voluntary, and of his own seeking; they requested him to take notice that the officer in attendance had orders to release him at any hour of the day or night, when he might knock upon his door for that purpose; but desired him to understand that, once going out, he would not be admitted any more. These conditions agreed upon, and he still remaining in the same mind, he was conducted to the prison, and shut up in one of the cells.

"In this cell, the man who had not the firmness to leave a glass of liquor standing untasted on a table before him—in this cell, in solitary confinement, and working every day at his trade of shoe-making, this man remained nearly two years. His health beginning to fail at the expiration of that time, the surgeon recommended that he should work occasionally in the garden; and as he liked the notion very much, he went about this new occupation with great cheerfulness.

"He was digging here one summer-day very industriously, when the wicket in the outer gate chanced to be left open: showing, beyond, the wellremembered dusty road and sun-burnt fields. The way was as free to him as to any man living, but he no sooner raised his head and caught sight of it, all shining in the sun, than, with the involuntary instinct of a prisoner, he cast away his spade, scampered off as fast as his legs would carry him, and never once looked back."

At Washington Boz had an interview with the American President, and, as might be expected, the great drawing-room, and the other chambers on the ground-floor, were "crowded to excess. No wonder that as soon as released from the throng, our traveller turned his thoughts towards the wilds and forests of the Far West; with a vague hankering after the vast solitude and quiet of a Prairie! But such delights are to be reached by a course no smoother than that of true love, as witness the coaching on a Virginian road, with an American Mr. Weller.

"He is a negro-very black indeed. He is dressed in a coarse pepperand-salt suit excessively patched and darned (particularly at the knees), grey stockings, enormous unblacked high-low shoes, and very short trousers. He has two odd gloves: one of parti-colored worsted, and one of leather. He has a very short whip, broken in the middle, and bandaged up with string. And yet he wears a low-crowned, broad-brimmed, black hat: faintly shadowing forth a kind of insane imitation of an English coachman! But somebody in authority cries Go ahead!' as I am making these observations. The mail takes the lead, in a four-horse wagon, and all the coaches follow in procession headed by No. 1.

"By the way, whenever an Englishman would cry All right!' an Amer

ican cries Go ahead! which is somewhat expressive of the national character of the two countries.

"The first half mile of the road is over bridges made of loose planks laid across two parallel poles, which tilt up as the wheels roll over them, and IN the river. The river has a clayey bottom, and is full of holes, so that half a horse is constantly disappearing unexpectedly, and can't be found again for some time.

"But we get past even this, and come to the road itself, which is a series of alternate swamps and gravel-pits. A tremendous place is close before us, the black driver rolls his eyes, screws his mouth up very round, and looks straight between the two leaders, as if he were saying to himself, 'We have done this before, but now I think we shall have a crash.' He takes a rein in each hand; jerks and pulls at both; and dances on the splashboard with both feet (keeping his seat of course), like the late lamented Ducrow on two of his fiery coursers. We come to the spot, sink down in the mire nearly to the coach-window, tilt on one side at an angle of fortyfive degrees, and stick there. The insides scream dismally; the coach stops; the horses flounder; all the other six coaches stop; and their four and twenty horses flounder likewise; but merely for company, and in sympathy with ours. Then the following circumstances occur.

"BLACK DRIVER (to the horses).—' Hi !'

66

Nothing happens. Insides scream again.

"BLACK DRIVER (to the horses)." Ho!'

"Horses plunge, and splash the black driver.

"GENTLEMAN INSIDE (looking out). Why, what on airth-' “Gentleman receives a variety of splashes and draws his head in again, without finishing his question, or waiting for an answer.

"BLACK DRIVER (still to the horses).—' Jiddy! Jiddy "

"Horses pull violently, drag the coach out of the hole, and draw it up a bank; so steep, that the black driver's legs fly up into the air, and he goes back among the luggage on the roof. But he immediately recovers himself, and cries (still to the horses),

"Pill!'

"No effect. On the contrary, the coach begins to roll back upon No. 2, which rolls back upon No. 3, which rolls back upon No. 4, and so on until No. 7 is heard to curse and swear, nearly a quarter of a mile behind.

"BLACK DRIVER (louder than before).- Pill!'

"Horses make another struggle to get up the bank, and again the coach rolls backward.

"BLACK DRIVER (louder than before).- Pe-e-e-ill!'

"Horses make a desperate struggle.

"BLACK DRIVER (recovering spirits).— Hi, Jiddy, Jiddy, pill." "Horses make another effort.

"BLACK DRIVER (with great vigcr).- Ally Loo! Hi, Jiddy, Jiddy. Pill. Ally Loo!'

"Horses almost do it.