According to the Prussian law, Dr. Kinkel
should have been sentenced to six years'
confinement as a state prisoner. This sentence
is accordingly passed upon the other
prisoners; and with a wise and commendable
clemency many are set free after a short time.
But as Dr. Kinkel is a man of high education
and celebrity, it is thought best to give him
a very severe punishment, according to the
old ignorance of what is called "making an
example,"–––as if this sort of example did
not provoke and stimulate, rather than deter
others; and, as if clemency were not only one
of the noblest attributes of royalty, but one
of its best safeguards in its effect on the
feelings of a people.

Dr. Kinkel is, accordingly, sentenced to be
imprisoned for life in a fortress, as a state
criminal; and away he is carried.

But now comes into play the anger and
resentment of many of those who had once
so much admired Kinkel, and held him up
as a religious champion, until the woeful day
when he left preaching for the study of
the arts; and the yet more woeful, not to call
it diabolical hour, when he announced his
opinion that a separation of Church and
State might be the best course for both.
After a series of intrigues, the enemies of
Kinkel induce the King to alter the
sentence; but in order to avoid the appearance
of unusual severity, it is announced that his
sentence of imprisonment in the fortress
shall be alleviated, by transferring him to an
ordinary prison. In pursuance, therefore,
of these suggestions of his enemies, he is
ordered to be imprisoned for life in one of
the prisons appropriated to the vilest
malefactors–––viz., to the prison of Naugard, on the
Baltic.

Dr. Kinkel is dressed in sackcloth, and his
head is shaved. His wedding-ring is taken
from him, and every little memento of his
wife and children which might afford him
consolation. His bed is a sack of straw laid
upon a board. He has to scour and clean his
cell, and perform every other menial office.
Light is allowed him only so long as he toils;
and, as soon as the requisite work is done, the
light is taken away. Such is his melancholy
lot at the present moment!

He who used to toil for thirteen hours a
day amidst the learned languages and the
works of antiquity, in the study of Theology,
and of the arts–––the eloquent preacher,
lecturer, and tutor–––is now compelled to waste
his life, with all its acquirements, in spinning.
For thirteen hours every day, he is doomed
to spin. By this labour he earns, every day,
threepence for the state, and a halfpenny for
himself! This latter sum, amounting to
threepence a week, is allowed him in mercy,
and with it he is permitted to purchase a
dried herring and a small loaf of coarse
brown bread,–––which, furthermore, he is
allowed to eat as a Sunday dinner,–––his ordinary
food consisting of a sort of odious pap
in the morning (after having spun for four
hours), some vegetables at noon, and some
bread and water at night.

For months he has not enjoyed a breath of
fresh air. He is allowed to walk daily for
half-an-hour in a covered passage; but even
this is refused whenever the gaoler is occupied
with other matters, and cannot attend to
trifles.

Dr. Kinkel has no books nor papers;–––there
is nothing for him but spinning–––spinning–––
spinning! Once a month he is, by great
clemency, allowed to write one letter to his
wife, which has to pass through the hands of
his gaoler, who, being empowered to act as
censor, judiciously strikes out whatever he
does not choose Madam Kinkel to know.
All sympathising letters are strictly withheld
from him, while all those which severely take
him to task, and censure his political opinions
and conduct, are carefully placed in his hands,
when he stops to take his breath for a minute
from his eternal spinning.

Relatives are not, by the law, allowed to
see a criminal during the first three months;
after that time, they may. But after having
been imprisoned at Naugard three months–––
short of a day–––Dr. Kinkel is suddenly
removed to another prison at Spandau, there to
re-commence a period of three months. By
this device he is prevented from seeing his
wife, or any friend–––all in a perfectly legal
way.

The gaoler is strictly enjoined not to afford
Dr. Kinkel any sort of opportunity, either by
writing or by any other means, of making
intercession with the King to obtain pardon,
or the commutation of his sentence into
banishment. All these injunctions are fully
obeyed by the gaoler–––indeed the present one
is more severe than any of the others.

Nevertheless, the melancholy truth has
oozed out—— the picture has worn its tearful
way through the dense stone walls–––and here
it is for all to see,–––and, we doubt not, for
many to feel.

Gottfried Kinkel, so recently one of the
most admired professors of the University of
Bonn, one of the ornaments of the scholarship
and literature of modern Germany, now
clothed in sackcloth, with shaven head, and
attenuated frame, sits spinning his last
threads. He utters no reproaches, no
complaints; but bears his sufferings with a sweet
resignation that savours already of the angelic
abodes to which his contemplations are ever
directed. He has entreated his wife to have
his heart buried amidst those lovely scenes
on which he so often gazed with serene
rapture, from his study-window in the Castle
of Popplesdorf.

Those who behold this last picture, and
revert to the one where the professor came
happily sliding his way to his class at the
University, may perchance share the emotion
which makes us pass our hands across our
eyes, to put aside the irrepressible tribute of