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 !'

'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.

"BLACK DRIVER (with his eyes starting out of his head).- Lee, den. Lee, dere. Hi. Jiddy, Jiddy. Pill. Ally Loo. Lee-e-e-e-e!'

They run up the bank, and go down again on the other side at a fearful pace. It is impossible to stop them, and at the bottom there is a deep hollow, full of water. The coach rolls frightfully. The insides scream. The mud and water fly about us. The black driver dances like a madman. Suddenly, we are all right, by some extraordinary means, and stop to breathe.

"A black friend of the driver is sitting on a fence. The black driver recognizes him by twirling his head round and round like a harlequin, rolling his eyes, shrugging his shoulders, and grinning from ear to ear. stops short, turns to me, and says:

He

“We shall get you through, sa, like a fiddle, and hope a please you when we get you through, sa. Old 'ooman at home, sir,' chuckling very much. 'Outside gentleman, sa, he often remember old 'ooman at home, sa,' grinning again.

"Ay, ay, we'll take care of the old woman. Don't be afraid.'

"The black driver grins again, but there is another hole, and beyond that another bank, close before us. So he stops short: cries (to the horses again), 'Easy-easy den-ease-steady-hi-Jiddy-pill-Ally-Loo," but never' Lee!' until we are reduced to the very last extremity, and are in the midst of difficulties, extrication from which appears to be all but impossible.

"And so we do the ten miles or thereabouts in two hours and a half, breaking no bones, though bruising a great many; and in short, getting through the distance like a fiddle.""

The next conveyance was by the Harrisburg Canal, on which there are two passage-boats, the Express and the Pioneer. For some reason, however, the Pioneers would come into the other boat, in which Boz was a passenger-an addition that drew out a certain thin-faced, spare-figured man, of middle age and stature, dressed in a dusty, drabbish-colored suit, and up to that moment as quiet as a lamb.

This may be all but it won't suit

"This may suit you, this may, but it don't suit me. very well with Down Easters, and men of Boston raising, my figure, no how; and no two ways about that; and so I tell you. Now, I'm from the brown forests of the Mississippi, I am; and when the sun shines on me, it does shine-a little. It don't glimmer where I live, the sun don't. No. I'm a brown forester, I am. I an't a Johnny Cake. There are no smooth skins where I live. We're rough men, there. Rather. If Down Easters and men of Boston raising are like this, I'm glad of it, but I'm none of that raising or of that breed. No. This company wants a little fixing-it does. I'm the wrong sort of a man for 'em, I am. They

won't like me, they won't. This is piling of it up a little too mountāinõus, this is.'

"At the end of every one of these short sentences he turned upon his heel, and walked the other way; checking himself abruptly when he had finished another short sentence, and turning back again. It is impossible for me to say what terrific meaning was hidden in the words of this brown forester, but I know that the other passengers looked on in a sort of admiring horror, and that presently the boat was put back to the wharf, and as many of the Pioneers as could be coaxed or bullied into going away were got rid of."

It was perfectly natural, after this "touch of the earthquake," to desire to see the Shakers, whose peculiar delirium tremens had been reported as unspeakably absurd but the elders had clearly received a hint of a chield coming, like Captain Grose, to make Notes and print them.

Presently we came to the beginning of the village, and alighting at the door of a house where the Shaker manufactures are sold, and which is the head-quarters of the elders, requested permission to see the Shaker worship.

66

Pending the conveyance of this request to some person in authority, we walked into a grim room, where several grim hats were hanging on grim pegs, and the time was grimly told by a grim clock, which uttered every tick with a kind of struggle, as if it broke the grim silence reluctantly and under protest. Ranged against the wall were six or eight stiff, high-backed chairs, and they partook so strongly of the general grimness that one would much rather have sat on the floor than incurred the smallest obligation to any of them.

Presently there stalked into this apartment a grim old Shaker, with eyes as hard, and dull, and cold, as the great round metal buttons on his coat and waistcoat: a sort of calm goblin. Being informed of our desire, he produced a newspaper wherein the body of elders, whereof he was a member, had advertised but a few days before, that, in consequence of certain unseemly interruptions which their worship had received from strangers, the chapel was closed for the space of one year."

The chapel will now be opened: for the chield is in England, and his Notes are not only printed but published, and by this time have been abundantly circulated, read, quoted, and criticised. Many of them, that will be canvassed elsewhere, are here left untouched, for obvious reasons; and various desirable extracts are omitted through want of space; for example, a pretty episode of a little woman with a little baby at St. Louis,