restoration to the respect and confidence of the officers and visiters of the institution, as shall strictly correspond with the evident advancement of the prisoner's reformation. The faithful prophet, Jeremiah, was, with the connivance of the king, thrown into a deep, miry dungeon, in the court of the prison. When it was found that he was likely to die. of hunger, the king ordered one of his officers to take with him thirty men, and release the prophet from his perilous situation. The historian tells us, that they humanely provided themselves with cords, and also with "old cast clouts and rotten rags," which they let down by the cords to the prisoner, directing him to place them under his armpits, that the cords might not lacerate his flesh when he was drawn up. It is some such mercy as this that we supplicate in behalf, not of prophets, but of prisoners. We would not have them jerked out of confinement, and thrown upon society without preparation, but would have them lifted up by some gentle and gradual process, that shall fit them, as far as may be, to resume the duties and relations of men and citizens. Second: the other defect which we had in view, is of a kindred character. Nothing is more inconsistent and unreasonable, than to send a discharged convict into the community, without funds, character, or means of support, (the state having pocketed his earnings,) and requiring him to maintain his integrity. Who would expect a patient from an ophthalmic hospital, to enter unharmed upon the business of engraving or proof-reading? or who would wrestle or dance with an ankle joint just recovering from the effects of dislocation? No less preposterous is it to suppose that a man whose vicious habits have been interrupted by a season of penitentiary discipline, and whose purposes of amendment are feeble, and perhaps but half formed, can return to the world, and withstand at once the pressure of poverty, the consciousness of degradation, the returning tide of old habits and sympathies, and the assaults of the devil in the form of a legion of temptations from within and without. This, of all others, is the moment of his extreme weakness, when, if ever, he needs most to be sustained and encouraged, and yet we throw him into circumstances from which few, even of the strongest, could extricate themselves, without being cast down and wounded, if not destroyed. The suggestion we would make is, that whenever the year ly income of the prison exceeds the actual expenses of supporting the convict, the surplus should be put to the credit of each laborer, in proportion to his diligence, skill, and good conduct. The fund thus accumulated would be applied, under proper restrictions, to the establishment of the prisoner in business at his discharge, or to the support and comfort of his family, as may seem most conducive to the ends of justice and humanity. Some provision like this is indispensable, and might be easily and wisely made, to meet this common and painful exigency of the discharged convict. We have extended these observations much beyond our original design. Our object was simply to show that the government, though authorized (it may be) to make the prisoner's labor compensate the treasury for the expense incurred in his prosecution and punishment, has no right to make it the source of revenue- -certainly not if it interfere with the great and chief ends of punishment. The whole tendency of the principle we have opposed is dangerous, unjust, and oppressive to the last degree. If the popularity of the Auburn system has grown out of its profitableness, and if this is the result of an unauthorized use of power, it shows a radical and inherent defect of principle, for which nothing can compensate. ART. V.-1. Diary in America. By Captain Marryatt, R. N. Philadelphia: 1839. Lea and Blanchard.. 2. Travels in North America. By the Honorable CHARLES 3. De la Démocratic en Amérique. Par A. DE TOCQUEVILLE. Democracy in America. By ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE, etc., etc. Translated by HENRY REEVE, Esq. With an original Preface and Notes. By JOHN C. SPENCER. Third American Edition. New York: 1839. George Adlard. 8vo. pp. 455. By 4. Lettres sur l' Amérique du Nord. Par M. CHEVALIER. Society, Manners, and Politics in the United States. MICHAEL CHEVALIER. Boston: 1839. Weeks, Jordan, and Company. 8vo. pp. 467. THE respectable Mr. Josselyn, who visited New England exactly two hundred years ago—having made his first voyage in 1638-was, we believe, the first English traveller who published his "Diary" in America. His "Account of Two Voyages to New England," published after his return to London in 1674, has been succeeded by many more pretending, and perhaps more brilliant productions, but we have after all, never seen a modern English book upon the subject that was more entertaining or more instructive. The spirit of his work, moreover, is highly praiseworthy. After relating, for instance, a good many tough stories, which he heard during his residence in the country-as of "the sea-serpent that lay quoiled up like a cable upon a rock at Cape Ann". of " a triton or mereman which one Mr. Mitten, a great fowler, saw in Casco Bay, which triton laying his hands upon the side of the canoe," had one of them chopped off by the said Mitten, which was "in all respects like the hand of a man". -of" a dance of male and female witches" on the seashore at Cape Ann, witnessed and described by one Mr. Foxwell, who "being in a shallop a little off the coast, was awakened by loud voices from the shore, calling 'Foxwell, Foxwell, come ashore!' two or three times," and opening his pre eyes, beheld the whole interesting exhibition-after retailing a good many wonders of this sort, he passes to make the following sagacious reflection: "These, with many other stories they told me, the credit whereof I shall neither impeach nor enforce, but shall satisfy myself, and I hope the reader, with the saying of a wise, learned, and honorable knight, that there be many stranger things in the world than are to be seen between London and Stanes." He was, in short, a truly philosophical traveller-free at once from judice and credulity. He had another merit besides, which has since become equally rare, although some of the late writers upon the subject will rather consider it a failing. He has given us very few details concerning the domestic manners of the New Englanders, and although he visited the governor, and dined repeatedly with Mr. Maverick, on Noddles Island, he has written very little concerning society in Boston. He presented his readers, to be sure, in his quaint and compact style with much useful information concerning the plants, beasts, birds, and fishes of New England; described the soil, the climate, the character of the aborigines; gave many statistical details of the population and resources of the different towns and villages, together with much historical information, and concluded with an accurate account of the system of government adopted by the settlers, and a shrewd investigation of its theoretical and practical merits. All this was very well; but he has left us totally in the dark concerning the exterior manners of those with whom he associated; and, notwithstanding that the institutions of the country were nearly as republican at that period as at the present day, he has omitted to detail to us the pernicious effects of the political institutions upon the manners and customs of the inhabitants. For our part, however, we think he was right. Mr. Josselyn knew what was worth writing about, and what was wholly insignificant. He understood that he was in a new country, one that had not been settled quite so long as that "between London and Stanes," and, while he was capable of attending to objects of real importance and interest -miracles included- even although he had never seen their prototypes at home, he was not astonished at finding less elegance, refinement, and comfort in his New England travels than he had been used to "between London and Stanes." He recognised that the state of society was transitional and temporary; he understood that the present was not to be examined as a solitary phenomenon, but as a link in a chain; and therefore he was a good traveller. Now, the deficiency of the very virtues we have been praising in "John Josselyn, gentleman," is the great cause of our complaint against most of the recent English travellers in America, although we willingly except from the category both the works which we have placed, among others, at the head of this article. One would suppose, from previous books, that the American republic had reached its culminating point; that, as a state, it was finished, and ready for inspection and criticism; and that, instead of our being in the very first chapter of our history, in the same great historical period, in fact, in which Mr. Josselyn found us, we stood upon exactly the same footing, and were to be judged by exactly the same rules, as the time honored states of Europe. On the contrary, the present-however gratifying to our pride, and interesting in itself—is nothing in this country, except as it is prophetic of the future. The position of the traveller in America, is exactly the reverse of the traveller's in any other country. The wanderer on the banks of the Euphrates, the Cephissus, or the Tiber, looks backward into the obscurity of departed time. Through the shadows of evening, which have so long rested upon the remains of the ancient world, the genius of the past arises at his bidding, and rebuilds for him the shattered temple, or repeoples the silent agora and desecrated forum. To him who stands amid the echoing ruins of the Acropolis, the scene around him is nothing, except as it connects the present with the mighty past; the ground upon which he treads is nothing to him, except as an enchanted carpet, bearing him backward into the regions of departed grandeur. When, through the mist of ages, he beholds the vast forms of the Grecian heroes -their warriors, their statesmen, their poets-in all their colossal proportions, but with all the matchless symmetry and beauty of the sculptured forms upon the frieze above him, he recognises that those relics of ancient art, however beautiful to his eye, are yet more pregnant with meaning, and reveal to him a more profound philosophy, when he regards them as exponents of the past, rather than as objects of sense. This, moreover, is no difficult task for the traveller. It is, in fact, precisely what every tourist in Greece or Italy does spontaneously, whether he writes verses on the subject or |