"As the old man crept out of his little hut," says Walter Scott, "his two she-goats came to meet him, and licked his hands in gratitude for the vegetables with which he supplied them from his garden."* The Black Dwarf acknowledged the gratitude of these animals, and asserted that, outcast and deformed as he was, the finest shape that ever statuary moulded would be an object of indifference or of alarm, should it present itself instead of the mutilated trunk, to whose services they were accustomed.

Although the fictitious delineations of this celebrated writer are hardly less valuable in relation to the human mind than if they were given as the authentic details of history, we find, in his Life of Napoleon, an incident parallel to the above, and which throws light on the subject before us. Speaking of the banishments and other forms of suffering connected with the French Revolution, he remarks, that "strangers are forcibly affected by the trifling incidents which sometimes recall the memory of those fearful times. A venerable French ecclesiastic being on a visit at a gentleman's house in North Britain, it was remarked by the family that a favourite cat, rather wild and capricious in his habits, paid particular attention to their guest. It was explained by the priest giving an account of his lurking in the waste garret, or lumber-room, of an artisan's house for several weeks. this condition he had no better amusement than to study the manners and habits of the cats which frequented his place of retreat, and acquire the mode of conciliating their favour. The difficulty of supplying him with food, without attracting suspicion, was extreme, and it could only be placed near his place of concealment in small quantities and at uncertain times. Men, women, and children knew of his being in that place; there were rewards to be gained by discovery, life to be lost by persevering in concealing him; yet he was faithfully preserved, to try upon a Scottish cat, after the restoration of the Monarchy, the arts which he had learned in his miserable place of shelter during the reign of Terror. The history of the time abounds with similar instances."+

The Black Dwarf, chap. vii.

+ Scott's Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, chap. xvi.

In

146. Other illustrations of a similar kind.

The instances of the preceding section are introduced to show that men, if deprived of human society, will endeavour to satisfy the natural demands of their propensities by forming a species of intimacy with the lower animals; a circumstance which seems to us decisively to evince not only the innate existence, but the great strength of the social tendency. There are multitudes of other facts of the same kind, and still more striking than those which have already been noticed. Baron Trenck, for instance, in order to alleviate the wretchedness of his long and dreadful imprisonment, made the attempt, and was successful in it, to tame a mouse. The mouse, according to his account of him, would not only play around him and eat from his hand, but discovered extraordinary marks of sagacity as well as of attachment.

"This intelligent mouse," he remarks, "had nearly been my ruin. I had diverted myself with it during the night; it had been nibbling at my door, and capering on a trencher. The sentinels happened to hear our amusement, and called the officers; they heard also, and added, all was not right in my dungeon. At daybreak my doors resounded; the town-major, a smith, and mason entered. Strict search was begun; flooring, walls, chains, and my own person were all scrutinized, but in vain. They asked what was the noise they had heard. I mentioned the mouse, whistled, and it came and jumped upon. my shoulder. Orders were given that I should be deprived of its society; I earnestly entreated that they would at least spare its life. The officer on guard gave me his word of honour he would present it to a lady, who would treat it with the utmost tenderness.

"He took it away, turned it loose in the guardroom, but it was tame to me alone, and sought a hiding-place. It had fled to my prison door, and, at the hour of visitation, ran into my dungeon, immediately testifying its joy by its antic leaping between my legs. It is worthy of remark that it had been taken away blindfold, that is to say, wrapped in a handkerchief. The guardroom was a hundred paces from my dungeon. How, then, did it find its master? Did it know or did it wait for the hour

of visitation? Had it remarked the doors were daily opened?

"All were desirous of obtaining this mouse, but the major carried it off for his lady; she put it into a cage, where it pined, refused all sustenance, and in a few days was found dead.-The loss of this little companion made me for some time quite melancholy."

◊ 147. Other instances in illustration of the same subject

Mr. Stewart, in illustrating this very subject, makes the following statement.-" The Count de Lauzun was confined by Louis XIV. for nine years in the Castle of Pignerol, in a small room where no light could enter but from a chink in the roof. In this solitude he attached himself to a spider, and contrived for some time to amuse himself in attempting to tame it, with catching flies for its support, and with superintending the progress of its web. The jailer discovered his amusement and killed the spider; and the Count used afterward to declare, that the pang he felt on the occasion could be compared only to that of a mother for the loss of a child.”

More recently we find statements of a similar purport in the interesting little work of Silvio Pellico, which gives an account of his Ten Years' Imprisonment.-" Being almost deprived of human society," he remarks, "I one day made acquaintance with some ants upon my window; I fed them; they went away, and, ere long, the place was thronged with these little insects, as if come by invitation. A spider, too, had weaved a noble edifice upon my walls, and I often gave him a feast of gnats or flies, which were extremely annoying to me, and which he liked much better than I did. I got quite accustomed to the sight of him; he would run over my bed, and come and take the precious morsels out of my hand."

On a certain occasion, being detected in conversation with his fellow-prisoner, Count Orobini, Pellico was not only reprimanded, but strictly ordered never afterward to converse from his window. He resolutely refused, in language that clearly indicates the workings and longings of the human heart. "I shall do no such thing. I shall speak as long as I have breath, and invite my neighbour VOL. II.-P

to talk to me. If he refuse, I will talk to my window bars, I will talk to the hills before me, I will talk to the birds as they fly about. I will talk."-On another occasion, after having been visited by some one who took a more than usual interest in his situation, he exclaims, "How strange, how irresistible is the desire of the solitary prisoner to behold some one of his own species! It amounts to almost a sort of instinct, as if to prevent insanity, and its usual consequence, the tendency to selfdestruction. The Christian religion, so abounding in views of humanity, forgets not to enumerate among its works of mercy the visiting of the prisoner. The mere aspect of man, his look of commiseration, his willingness, as it were, to share with you, and bear a part of your heavy burden, even when you know he cannot relieve you, has something that sweetens your bitter cup."

We hold it to be quite certain, that such considerations and facts as have been brought forward cannot be satisfactorily explained except on the ground that the love of society is originally implanted in the human mind. We might, therefore, be safe in leaving the subject here; but there are some other facts, similar to those which have been mentioned, that seem to possess no small degree of interest. We refer not so much to the case of distinguished individuals who have been subjected to long and severe imprisonment, as to some of the more general results that may be gathered from the history of prison discipline.

148. The subject illustrated from experiments in prison discipline. In the year 1821, the Legislature of New-York directed the Superintendent of the Auburn State Prison to select a number of the most hardened criminals, and to lock them up in solitary cells, to be kept there day and night, without any interruption of their solitude, and without labour. This order, which was regarded, and was designed to be regarded, in the light of an experiment, was carried into effect in September of that year, by confining eighty criminals in the manner prescribed. On this experiment Messrs. Beaumont and Tocqueville, who were recently commissioned by the French govern

ment to examine and to report on the American system of Prison Discipline, make the following remarks: This trial, from which so happy a result had been anticipated, was fatal to the greater part of the convicts; in order to reform them, they had been subjected to complete isolation; but this absolute solitude, if nothing interrupt it, is beyond the strength of man; it destroys the criminal without intermission and without pity; it does not reform, it kills. The unfortunates on whom this experiment was made, fell into a state of depression so manifest that their keepers were struck with it; their lives seemed in danger if they remained longer in this situation; five of them had already succumbed during a single year; their moral state was no less alarming; one of them had become insane; another, in a fit of despair, had embraced the opportunity, when the keeper brought him something, to precipitate himself from his cell, running the almost certain chance of a mortal fall.-Upon these and similar effects the system was finally judged. The governor of the State of New-York pardoned twenty-six of those in solitary confinement. The others, to whom this favour was not extended, were allowed to leave the cells during the day, and to work in the common workshops of the prison."

The Philadelphia Penitentiary appears to be constituted on what may be considered a mixed principle of punishment, viz., solitary confinement combined with labour, and alleviated by opportunities of reading and by frequent visits from official persons, such as the inspectors, wardens, and chaplain. When Messrs. Beaumont and Tocqueville visited this Penitentiary, one of the prisoners said to them, in language which feelingly intimates how repugnant entire solitude is to the natural sentiments of the human heart, "It is with joy that I perceive the figure of the keepers who visit my cell. This summer a cricket came into my yard; it looked like a companion. When a butterfly or any other animal happens to enter my cell, I never do it any harm."

It may be added here, on the authority of the Translator of the Work from which the foregoing extracts have been made, that "the fatal effects of solitary confinement