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    theus—it eads with the first scenes ) was to her a fascination . After these there come "A Vision of Poets "" The Poet ' s "Vow "—two ballads , and some sonnets . In the second volume the ballads occupy a foremost place , and miscellaneous poems fill the remainder . "We will not pause here to criticize these ballads and romaunts ; our present purpose is to indicate the

    subjects chosen , and to suggest how they are those -which a poet would select when moved by reading and reverie rather than by the oestrus of experience . And what the mere choice indicates the treatment confirms . The poems want substance . The form of the vase is beautiful , and its arabesque tracery flatters the eye ; but the material is fragile or indifferent . The true regal stamp of the guinea is visible ; but unfortunately the coin is not gold .

    Enough on this point . Next week we will narrow our criticism to particulars , and tie up a nosegay of lovely flowers culled from her garden ; for the present we will lighten the prosing we have just remorselessly nung upon your patience by the quotation of two sonnets , which will show how she can write when her own experience is the fuel of her flame : — " TEABS . " Thank God , bless God , all ye who suffer not More grief than ye can weep for . That is well—That is light grieving ! Lighter none befel Since Adam forfeited the primal lot . Tears ! what are tears ? The babe weeps in its cot , The mother singing ; at her marriage bell The Bride weeps ; and before the oracle Of high-fatied hills the poet hath forgot That moisture on his cheeks . Thank God for grace "Whoever weep ; albeit as some have done , Ye grope tear-blinded in a desert place . And touch but tombs—look , up ! Those tears will run Soon in long rivers down the lifted face , And leave the vision clear for stars and sun . " Noble writing that ; true , musical , and potent . Hear her again on " GRIEF . " I tell you hopeless grief is passionless —• That only men incredulous of despair , Half taught in anguish , through the midnight air Beat upward to God ' s throne in loud access Of shrieking and reproach . Full desef tness In souls , as countries , lieth silent—bare Under the blenching , vertical eye-glare Of the absolute heavens . Deep-hearted man , express Grief for thy Dead in silence like to death ; Most like a monumental statue set In everlatting watch and Moveless woe Till itself crumble to the dust beneath . Touch it : the marble eyelids are not wet , If it could weep it could arise and go .

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    maconochie ' s principles of punishment . The Principles of Punishment on which the Mark System of Prison Discipline is advocated . By Captain Maconochie , K . N ., K . H . John Ollivier , Pall-mall . Ik this small pamphlet of twenty-four pages is contained the animus of a subject certainly equal to any other of the day for interest and importance . The necessity of a thorough reformation in the discipline of prisons and the end of punishment has , at last , forced itself on the public mind . Even the tardy intellects of ministerial officials have been obliged to

    sphere of the doctor and the undertaker than of any one else . Sad reports from the infirmary , of nervous affections and brain diseases , with startling interludes of madness and suicide , are truthful exponents of the effects of this silent separate system—in spite of the eloquent declamations of chaplains and governors , pointing triumphantly to the symmetry of their theory , and the " necessary result" it must have on the minds under its influence . There are grave objections against the Model Prisons , with their separation , their silence , their idlings . In the first place , thev are manifestly

    un-; y picked men prisons ; only men with strong organization and healthy functions , are allowed to pass through this most terrible ordeal of eighteen months' solitude . Hence , it is an evident injustice to some , because of its inapplicability to all . They are also practically cruel beyond the moral power of any laws in the world ; they destroy the health and weaken the brain ; and this , though more refined and subtile , is not a whit less guilty than the rack and the chain , and the whip of olden times . The law has no divine authority to make a criminal insane by its punishments ; yet , until those dark

    numbers in the medical reports from Pentonville , &c , can be fined down , we must give to the solitary system the fatal characteristics of this heinous crime . It is also unpractical in its discipline , and unfavourable in its working . Yet expensive , luxurious , cruel , and theoretic as it is , this id the system which has been adopted as the best thing in exchange for the brutalization , the absence of all sufficient superintendence , the dirt , immorality , lax discipline , and diligent culture of vice , rife in our prisons under the former management . We think something better might have been chosen .

    In all the awakened interest on this subject the true idea to be . found in the law of punishment is lost sight of . The principle of reformation is held by only a few , who must be content to live under that cloud of social disesteem which so surely overshadows the vanguard of reform . A prison is still to county magistrates and visiting justices a place of pure punishment—not the corrective school of moral discipline which it ought to be . Society still clings to the right of revenge against the breaker of its laws ; and but a faint small cry of " Justice" is raised asainBt the torrent of unreasoning execration pouring

    over the head of offenders . Physiology is undreamt of—social circumstances taken into no account . A man offends the law ; the law must have its revenge ; and the sin is expiated by a certain amount of time passed in duresse , after which the sinner is sent back to society less fitted than before to cope with its power . Such is the remnant of an uncivilized instinct which we have preserved in the heart of our refined era .

    This appears so much the more brutal when we reflect on the causes of crime—very many of them beyond individual po wer of control . Organization—the most fruitful source—is manifestly a circumstance which no man can alter for himself , but which the influential classes of society might improve by attending to physical and known laws in their dealings with the poor . Ignorance is another cause easy to be removed from above , but which cannot be touched from below . The depravity of mind , induced by

    daily habits of filth and vice , and overcrowding and want and poverty combined , is again a fertile source of crime ; yet none of these conditions are inalienable from human nature ; all might be remedied if those holding power over their generation would but set about the work . Instead of that , we make laws which create crimes out of natural instincts and hereditary rights of birth ; we breed a race of criminals and

    paupers with as much diligence as we would breed Pascals and Newtons ; then build prisons and draw out theories , and talk of the majesty of the laws which must be vindicated , upheld . In all this there is not one ray of truth or light , not one echo of the great words of God written in the human heart . It is simply a case of power—of brute force—and we may baptize it with what high-sounding name we like , we shall make nothing else out of it . One man alone has come forward with a system that has worked well where it has been tried , and that seems based on more practical knowledge than the martinet dogmatism of the military theory of punishment . Captain Maconochie ' s pamphlet opens with an axiom that contains the sum and substance of tho whole . All after this is simply explanation and enlargement : —

    " The great error in the existing sjrttemi of Prison Discipline is that they aim too exclusively at making orderly , obedient , ana submissive PrUonert , and not nearly enough at training active , efficient , industrious , and well-disposed Free men . " He goes on to say : — " When we examine in detail the incidents of existing prison life , we shall find the whole , nearly without exception , of deteriorating character . 1 . Sentences are measured by Time , which is thus made the great enemy of prisoners ; and , instead of their being systematically taught to value it , as the industrious free are compelled to do outside , they are systematically taught to hold it of

    no account , and to cheat and idle it away by every means in their power . It is impossible to overrate the moral injury thus inflicted , and which might all be avoided by the substitution of Sentences measured by Tasks instead . Indolence , evasion of labour , and habitual pruriency of thought , act , and language are among the direct results . 2 . Fixed rations are issued to all prisoners , irrespective of any effort made to deserve them . The necessity of exertion , therefore , previous to enjoyment , so forcibly and beneficially pressed on the attention of the industrious poor in society , is here entirely lost sight of ; and a bounty is almost directly offered to crime and indolence . 3 . Two of the regulations on this head are further , ' that

    prisoners shall have three meals a-day—of which , at least , two shall be hot , " and that' they shall not be set to hard labour immediately after any of them {* as though it were expressly desired to make them effeminate as well as indolent , and unfit to contend with the difficulties of laborious industry in society , as well as disinclined . 4 . Another regulation is that prisoners shall not have any communication with their families till after they have been three months imprisoned , and only once every three months afterwards ; as though it could be the wisdom or interest of society to screen them from the knowledge in detail of the distresses into which their crimes have plunged those dearest to them , or to weaken , almost to

    severance , those ties which , if maintained , would most facilitate their return to society , and stimulate their exertions in it . The regulation is meant as an aggravation of suffering , but in most cases it operates father as a relief ; and it deeply injures whatever remains of good feeling may exist on either side , when a wife and family are thus debarred from communicating their griefs , distresses , and direct or indirect reproaches , to the author of them . 5 . Another regulation forbids prisoners to be employed in teaching or otherwise directing their companions , as if it were desired to cripple the means of instruction in this field by excluding from it all monitorial agency , or as if it could be wise to make it impossible for prisoners to exercise a beneficial influence over

    each other , and indispensable that their only agency in this way should be injurious . And , lastly , scarcely any point is more insisted on in modern codes of Prison Discipline than that of keeping prisoners under a constant and rigorous supervision—a practice which , however plausibly it may be advocated , both generates and fosters that habit of eye-service ( and nothing besides ) , which so peculiarly unfits a discharged prisoner for the task of self-guidance after release . Other points might be cited , all of a similar description with the above , all enfeebling and deteriorating character , and making it nearly impossible for a man who has been once a prisoner , whatever his purposes or convictions may be , to recover , and steadily maintain a renewed position in society . But for the purpose now in view these may suffice . "

    Each one of the clauses quoted above bears its own condemnation on the face of it . A " Time sentence /' especially , is incompatible with any voluntary endeavour to improve . A mind of more susceptibility than most might be impressed by religious books , sermons , prayers , &c . ; but the general characteristic of the criminal mind is its hardness , not its impressionability ; and the good to be effected by a dogmatic faith and a spiritualized religion is but small against the power of counteracting physical agencies . It is to destroy this principle of time sentences that Captain Maconochie has given all his strength . His meaning will be best expressed in his own words : —

    " A military barrack , notwithstanding the presumed original innocence of its inmates , and a high point of honour studiously cultivated in them ( for which no substitute can be found in a prison ) , yet notoriously demoralizes ; and can it be deemed possible that a similar organization can reclaim criminals ? Instead of this we must carefully copy the incidents of that frugal , honest , and laborious poverty to which we desire to restore our criminals , and for which it should , therefore , be our earnest endeavour to qualify them . No more hot meals without previous exertion to earn them—no more undervaluing of time , nor stimulus consequently to skulking and evasion—no more interest but in industry , or success but through its exercise , and the exhibition of every other description of good conduct , proved not by words only but by actions , not by lip submission , but by active

    strenuous exertion . It is thus that the stern school of punishment would be made really reformatory . Every man would have his fate in his own hands . It would be very tolerable , and its duration also would be comparatively short , if he were steadily diligent and wellconducted ; and most painful , and , it might be , even interminable , if he were otherwise . The most refractory could not but be thus at length subdued . When a man keeps the key of his own prison he is soon persuaded to fit it to the lock ; and even were the inner purpose to continue unsubdued , he would be much more cautious after a probation of this active character , than after a period of mere endurance , and be much more able to contend with subsequent difficulties , and consequently be exempt from muoh subsequent temptation . "

    recognize its value ; while governors of gaols , who not so long since were practically irresponsible , now send up to Parliament such minute accounts , such careful statistics and plausible results , as prove that even to the secret places of power the spirit of the time has found entrance , how small soever its influence and confined its sphere for the present . Parliamentary committees which come to nothing , model governors of military exactness and rigid discipline , perfect theories of contradictory tendencies , attest both the gravity of the question and the incapacity of its

    present handling . The first glorious efforts of Howard in the way of purely physical improvements are gradually taking the greater design of moral discipline ; but men still overlook the manifest advantages of certain methods over others , and still put their trust in dogmas which ignore the positive conditions of human nature . Every primitive specific yet tried has notoriously failed to suppress crime or to reform criminals . They have been simply

    means of punishment—the legalized right of vengeance—retribution in its arbitrary form of retaliation . They have never gone to the root of the evil in physiological consideration or moral treatment ; they have never looked to causes , nor to the best way of removing those causes , while dealing with results . Even the Model Prisons , those abortive products of a crooked dootrine , are found totally inefficient as general remedies against crime . They are more the

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    Nov . 30 , 185 a . ] © f ? 0 &eS& £ Y * 857

• Citation
  • Leader (1850-1860), Nov. 30, 1850, page 857, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1861/page/17/