POWER AND GENTLENESS.

I'VE thought, at gentle and ungentle hour,
Of many an act and giant shape of power;
Of the old kings with high exacting looks,
Sceptred and globed; of eagles on their rocks,
With straining feet, and that fierce mouth and drear,
Answering the strain with downward drag austere;
Of the rich-headed lion, whose huge frown,
All his great nature, gathering, seems to crown;
Then of cathedral with its priestly height,
Seen from below at superstitious night;

Of ghastly castle, that eternally

Holds its blind visage out to the lone sea;

And of all sunless, subterranean deeps

The creature makes, who listens while he sleeps,
Avarice; and then of those old earthly cones,
That stride, they say, over heroic bones;

And those stone heaps Egyptian, whose small doors
Look like low dens under precipitous shores;
And him, great Memnon, that long sitting by,
In seeming idleness, with stony eye,
Sang at the morning's touch, like poetry;
And then of all the fierce and bitter fruit
Of the proud planting of a tyrannous foot,-
Of bruised rights, and flourishing bad men,
And virtue wasting heavenwards from a den;
Brute force, and fury; and the devilish drouth
Of the fool cannon's ever-gaping mouth;
And the bride-widowing sword; and the harsh bray
The sneering trumpet sends across the fray;
And all which lights the people-thinning star
That selfishness invokes,-the horsed war,
Panting along with many a bloody mane.—

I've thought of all this pride, and all this pain,
And all the insolent plenitudes of power,
And I declare, by this most quiet hour,
Which holds in different tasks by the fire-light
Me and my friends here, this delightful night,
That Power itself has not one half the might
Of Gentleness. "Tis want to all true wealth;
The uneasy madman's force, to the wise health;
Blind downward beating, to the eyes that see;
Noise to persuasion, doubt to certainty;
The consciousness of strength in enemies,
Who must be strain'd upon, or else they rise;
The battle to the moon, who all the while,
High out of hearing, passes with her smile;
The tempest, trampling in his scanty run,
To the whole globe, that basks about the sun;
Or as all shrieks and clangs, with which a sphere,
Undone and fired, could rake the midnight ear,
Compared with that vast dumbness nature keeps

Throughout her starry deeps,

Most old, and mild, and awful, and unbroken,

Which tells a tale of peace beyond whate'er was spoken.

Leigh Hunt.

A STATE HAS NO RIGHT TO PUNISH A MAN TO WHOM IT HAS GIVEN NO PREVIOUS INSTRUCTION.-Barlow.

DUNGEON OF CHILLON.

THE castle of Chillon is situated between Clarens and Villeneuve; which last is at one extremity of the Lake of Geneva. On its left are the entrances of the Rhone, and opposite are the Alps; near it, on a hill behind, is a torrent; below it, washing its walls, the lake has been fathomed to the depth of eight hundred feet (French measure). Within it is a range of dungeons, in which the early Swiss reformers, and, subsequently, state-offenders, were confined. Across one of the vaults is a beam black with age, on which the condemned were formerly executed. In the cells are seven pillars, or rather eight, one being half-merged in the wall; in some of these are rings for fetters. Here Bonnivard, the learned and virtuous patriot and reformer was shamefully imprisoned for six years, for defending Geneva against the Duke of Savoy and the bishop.

AND this place my forefathers made for man!
This is the process of our love and wisdom
To each poor brother who offends against us-
Most innocent, perhaps and what if guilty?
Is this the only cure? Merciful God!
Each pore and natural outlet shrivell'd up
By ignorance and parching poverty,

His energies roll back upon his heart,

And stagnate and corrupt, till, changed to poison,

They break out on him, like a loathsome plague-spot!
Then we call in our pamper'd mountebanks:

And this is their best cure! uncomforted

And friendless solitude, groaning and tears,

And savage faces, at the clanking hour,

Seen through the steam and vapours of his dungeon,
By the lamp's dismal twilight! So he lies
Circled with evil, till his very soul

Unmoulds its essence, hopelessly deform'd
By sights of evermore deformity!

With other ministrations thou, Ŏ Nature!

Healest thy wandering and distemper'd child:

Thou pourest on him thy soft influences,

Thy sunny hues, fair forms, and breathing sweets;
Thy melodies of woods, and winds, and waters!
Till he relent, and can no more endure

To be a jarring and a dissonant thing
Amid this general dance and minstrelsy;
But, bursting into tears, wins back his way,
His angry spirit heal'd and harmonized

By the benignant touch of love and beauty.

Coleridge.

A Prison is a grave to bury men alive, and a place wherein a man for half a year's experience may learn more law than he can in Westminster for an hundred pound.-Mynshul, 1618.

THE NOBLE GAOLER.

THE first principle in the management of the guilty seems to me to be to treat them as men and women; which they were before they were guilty, and will be when they are no longer so, and which they are in the midst of it all. Their humanity is the principal thing about them; their guilt is a temporary state. The insane are first men, and secondarily diseased men; and in a due consideration of this order of things lies the main secret of the successful treatment of such.

The wonderfully successful friend of criminals, Captain Pilisbury, of the Weathersfield prison, has worked on this principle, and owes his success to it. His moral power over the guilty is so remarkable, that prison-breakers who can be confined nowhere else are sent to him, to be charmed into staying their term out. I was told of his treatment of two such. One was a gigantic personage, the terror of the country, who had plunged deeper and deeper in crime for seventeen years. Captain Pillsbury told him when he came, that he hoped he would not repeat the attempts to escape which he had made elsewhere. "It will be best," said he, "that you and I should treat each other as well as we can. I will make you as comfortable as I possibly can, and shall be anxious to be your friend; and I hope you will not get me into any difficulty on your account. There is a cell intended for solitary confinement: but we never use it; and I should be very sorry ever to have to turn the key upon anybody in it. You may range the place as freely as I do, if you will trust me as I shall trust you." The man was sulky, and for weeks showed only very gradual symptoms of softening under the operation of Captain Pillsbury's cheerful confidence. At length, information was given to the Captain, of this man's intention to break prison. The Captain called him, and taxed him with it: the man preserved a gloomy silence. He was told that it was now necessary for him to be locked up in the solitary cell, and desired to follow the Captain, who went first, carrying a lamp in one hand, and the key in the other. In the narrowest part of the passage, the Captain (who is a small, slight man,) turned round and looked in the face of the stout criminal. "Now," said he, "I ask you whether you have treated me as I deserve? I have done every thing I could think of to make you comfortable; I have trusted you, and you have never given me the least confidence in return, and have even planned to get me into difficulty. Is this kind?-And yet I cannot bear to lock you up. If I had the least sign that you cared for me."-The man burst into tears. "Sir," said he, "I have been a very devil these seventeen years: but you treat me like a man." "Come, let us go back," said the Captain. The convict had the free range of the prison as before. From this hour, he began to open his heart to the Captain, and cheerfully fulfilled his whole term of imprisonment, confiding to his friend, as they arose, all impulses to violate his trust, and all facilities for doing so which he imagined he saw.

The other case was of a criminal of the same character, who went so far as to make the actual attempt to escape. He fell, and hurt his ancle very much. The Captain had him brought in and laid on his bed, and the ancle attended to; every one being forbidden to speak a word of reproach to the sufferer. The man was sullen, and would not say whether the bandaging of his ancle gave him pain or not. This was in the night; and every one returned to bed when all was done. But the Captain could not sleep. He was distressed at the attempt, and thought he could not have fully done his duty by any man who would make it. He was afraid the man was in great pain. He arose, threw on his gown, and went with a lamp to the cell. The prisoner's face was turned to the wall, and his eyes were closed; but the traces of suffering were not to be mistaken. The Captain loosened and replaced the bandage, and went for his own pillow to rest the limb upon; the man neither speaking nor moving all the time. Just when he was shutting the door, the prisoner