caused by misery and want. Society ought therefore to protect and encourage trade, commerce and navigation, and this not so much as a guardian, but rather like an attentive and enlightened physician, who knows when and how to do away with whatever hinders the free and powerful developement of the natural tendencies. This should exhibit itself less in a severely juridical examination of the possibility any one may have of obtaining his support, than in actively procuring him new and widened paths for that purpose.

"An improved municipal system, and an improved poor law, are also among those measures which are imperatively called for to enable us, with any hope of success, to put a limit to the increasing poverty and demoralization which surround us. It is only by these energetic and united means that society can heal the evil at its very root." *

But our space forbids us to extract more largely from these interesting pages, interesting in themselves and for their own sake, and not less so as showing the sentiments of the future sovereign of two united nations. Surely some one will favour the English public with a translation of the whole work.

The expense of erecting prisons on the solitary system, where required, and of modifying those already in existence, after the Auburn system, so as to ensure an efficient and moral control over the whole body of Swedish criminals, the Prince estimates at 2,777,820 R. D. Banco, or about 231,4857. sterling. This is certainly a large sum, but our author proves that, if things are allowed to remain on their present footing, this sum will be paid in a very few years without any improvement in those schools of crime, the existing prisons, and that a change of system would allow a material diminution of the periods of imprisonment, so as to cut off a large share of the present outlay for the support of the prisoners in the public gaols. He also recommends the gradual introduction of the Philadelphian system, so as to learn by experience what advantages it may possess, and lessen the expense attending its adoption.

The whole subject is exemplified in all its details. We have drawings of plans, estimates, calculations, explanations, &c. on every point. At the same time, a due regard is paid to the claims of Swedish peculiarities. The book is national, and this is not the least of its merits.

Notwithstanding the gratification which its perusal has afforded us, however, we cannot but remark one or two omissions which we would willingly see supplied in a third edition. Nothing is said as to the treatment or classification of political prisoners. Now if by this silence it is meant-by the aid of a Swedish "jury," as lucus a non lucendo-quietly to hand over a political opponent

* P. 80-85.

or unruly oppositionist, or hated man of letters, to the tender mercies and intolerable sufferings of solitary imprisonment, in a cell 9 feet by 5 (if for one year), or 13 feet by 9 (if for more than one year), with one or two hours' exercise per week in a small yard, and without any other alleviation than "work" if requested, two or three "religious books," and the "consolations" of the "official chaplain," too often merely a sneaking, spying, talebearing informer,-friends and relatives being all prohibited entrance, then we say such a law would suit the purpose of modern state-prosecutors equally as well as the "wells" of Venice or the "fortresses" of Austria, without the odium of either the one or the other!

*

We also find nothing added in defence of the right of the unconvicted prisoner, to every comfort and privilege consistent with the safe keeping of his person. Solitary confinement, in his case, we would highly recommend; it preserves him from the contamination of gaol acquaintances, and affords him leisure for repose and instruction; but it should always be understood that the prisoner is innocent until he is proved to be guilty; and as such his friends should have free access to him, under proper regulations, and the indulgence of air and exercise, books and writings, should never be denied him.

This subject of the exclusion of friends is one which has been too much overlooked. Why should we endeavour to make the prison as painful, as torturing as possible, without the infliction. of physical thumb-screws, pullies, and Spanish boots? Is the great end for which we say we institute solitary cells, the awakening of moral feelings and the restoration of its proper tone of innocence to the corrupted heart-to be accomplished by forbidding the unfortunate prisoner ever to see or hear the endearing associations of father, mother, wife and child; or do not the tender, and melting, and purifying ideas these visits would excite, aid the other appliances and connections with humanity, and a higher principle inculcated by the ministry of God and his medical attendant? Of a verity, we are too inhuman in our projects; too refined in our exclusions of natural instinct from the prison-house.

It gives us pleasure to observe, that Prince Oscar severely blames the present neglect of prisons by the public, and the turning over of the important duties occurring there to a state functionary, and then washing our hands of the whole business. The chaplain he keeps as a necessary officer, but he urges the Christian citizen-philanthropist to lose no opportunity of personally visiting the poor man's prison, and of administering to his sick soul and broken fortunes.

The above are a part of the Prince's proposed sizes and regulations for his new prisons.

Instead of barring the cell inmate from sunbeams* and from society, we would plant a wide garden-plot with trees, filled with singing birds, and pretty harmless flowers; we would let him bask in the golden ray and feast his eye on the shooting leaf; his wife should not be far from him, his child should once more climb upon his knee; God, man, nature, grace, solitude, society, and judgments mixed with mercy, should all call him back to innocence and purity, and then we might hear at last that gaol reformations were nott Utopian!

Before we conclude, we take this opportunity of expressing our gratitude to Prince Oscar for the general tone of real humanity pervading his pages. He demands, for instance, that mother and child shall never be separated; that the prison fare shall not be a starvation torture; that the prisoner's earnings shall not all be swallowed up to reimburse the state; that efforts shall be widely and zealously made by local committees and general inspectors to provide honest employment for the discharged victim of crime, poverty or ignorance; and that, above all, education, poor relief and Christian love, shall endeavour to prevent, rather than to punish, breaches of the law. Sentiments such as these do Prince Oscar honour; they will flourish when thrones are forgotten and empty titles shall be no more. They will smooth the pillow of disease and death in this world, and will "go before" to brighter realms, to welcome him to laurels which will never fade, to a crown which shall never be removed from the immortal temples it wreathes and enfolds. "I was sick, and ye visited me; I was in prison, and ye came unto me!"

To Mr. Kelly, the proposer of the abolishment of capital punishment altogether; to Sir Hesketh Fleetwood, the elegant advocate of Victor Hugo's notions on this subject, on which we have adverted in F. Q. R. No. 50, and to all other abolitionists, we recommend a careful perusal of Prince Oscar's book, since they are bound to make out a system of equal efficiency and moral restraint with the one they seek to demolish.

*We have seen in several of the newly-erected more or less solitary confinement prisons of England and Scotland, that the cell windows are so constructed as to admit a little light but to exclude the sun! We will not characterize as we ought this cruel detail of a cruel system in a Christian land!

All parties agree that, even in the new cell-gaols, partial reform is rather the result of terror or of prudence than of conviction.

ART. IV.-1. Guida dell' Educatore, e Letture per i fanciulli, foglio mensuale, compilato da Raffaello Lambruschini. No. 1 -60. Florence. 1836-1841.

2. Letture Popolari, foglio settimanale, publicato a Torino.

1837-1841.

3. Saggio di Racconti, offerto ai giovanetti Italiani da Pietro Thouar. Firenze. 1841.

"NOWHERE does the plant man grow so well as in Italy," was the quaint but pithy remark of Alfieri, who of all writers ought to be the least liable to the charge of patriotic partiality, if, at least, we are to believe that he was sincere in his assertion, "that Asti was his birth-place, but he looked on the whole world as his country."

That the soil and climate of the Italian peninsula is highly favourable to the growth and development of all physical, moral and intellectual faculties of the human race, as to every other kind of animal and vegetable life, it would be as idle and useless to attempt to demonstrate as it would be difficult and unjust to gainsay.

We need not go far back in the past and ascend to the happier eras of Roman and medieval greatness, when the high training of military discipline, or the spirit of commercial enterprise, called into action the energies of that gifted nation; we have only to visit the most obscure suburbs of the Trastevere at Rome, the Molo at Naples, and the Porto-Franco at Genoa, or otherwise to ramble along the whole range of the Apennines, or through the vallies of Brescia and Bergamo, to feel convinced that nature is still true to herself, and that individually the plant man springs from that genial ground as robust, sound and healthful, and is as susceptible of attaining the highest degree of mental and bodily perfection, as when fostered by the blessed air of liberty, and cheered and warmed by the sacred sunbeams of religion, glory and patriotism.

The comparative barrenness and deterioration of that privileged garden is consequently attributable only to one obvious reason-the want or the inopportunity of culture.

Education is all that constitutes the wide difference between a free citizen of the Roman commonwealth, and the ragged, priestridden, brutified Lazzarone, whose very worship is an abomination in the sight of God.

Hence the necessity of preparing the lowest classes for those political vicissitudes which may eventually rescue their country from its civil and religious thraldom, is universally felt among those Italian patriots who most earnestly labour at the promotion of

their national cause. Every one feels that their people must be men ere they presume to be freemen: that education is the first, the surest, the most efficient and radical, as well as the only legitimate revolution. Hence this word-education-which has of late given rise to so many wild and vague speculations, on which honest men of all creeds, sects and parties seem equally to place implicit reliance, but to which all of them are apt to give such strange, such widely different interpretations, has made its way and created its wonted ferment even in Italy: and surely there is no country in the world so utterly in want of the redeeming influence of that most powerful social engine, or one in which its application is likely to be attended with more immediate and luminous results. The most fertile field can best reward the toils of the husbandman.

To doubt the influence of education would be to call in question the infinite perfectibility, and, therefore, the divine origin of the human mind. And we do not, for a moment, admit that any honest man will conscientiously oppose or discountenance the efforts of those who ardently and zealously, though sometimes rather too sanguinely and indiscriminately, labour at the propagation of popular instruction.

Education-that most irresistible of moral agents, whose ascendency can be equally extended over all created things, that Orpheus' lyre which dragged stones and trees after its charmed strains, that indefatigable virtue which

homini docuit parere leones,"

which gave the English horse so decided a superiority even over the native Arabian breed, cannot lose its redeeming powers when turned to the improvement of that sovereign being, whose mortal part alone is liable to the imperfections and infirmities of this perishable world.

Man is essentially the most docile of beings; he is equal to any station to which he is properly trained; who doubts it? but these universally-acknowledged and long-hackneyed truisms which sound so fair and irrefutable in theory, cannot equally stand the test of practical experiment.

Education has hitherto been considered only in the abstract, as if the whole social order could be made subservient to its Utopian views; as if, according to the ideas of Lycurgus aud St. Simon, the political edifice could be based on the fundamental discipline of the school.

But the main object of education should be to fit man for life, It ought to instil into the youth's mind that there is a society already in existence, in which he is to fill a place, in which he will have duties to perform, hardships and storms to endure. It ought