compass indeed. So, at least, does it appear
on the surface, and to a traveller's superficial
view.

There is some light work done in the
way of translation, however. Turning over
the volumes of an Anglo-Dutch trader, I
find on the counter, three fresh hot-pressed
volumes, of royalest-octavo size, which I find
on examination to be a work of fiction entitled
"Kleine Dora." The Proprietor of book-
store informs me fluently that it is a work
of all others the newest, being the latest
effort of the well-known Heer Karl Dickens.
Kleine Dora is the Little Dorrit, done into
Dutch, with Heaven only knows what jumble
and mystification. I find the illustrations to
the work reduced to the size of stereoscopic
pictures, and gathered some dozen together
on a single page, with considerable loss of
effect, as may be well conceived but with
this result, that you have the whole trials
and adventures of Kleine Dora presented
panoramically, and at a single view. On a
shelf, too, I find Bleak House, and marvel
what they can make of the Lord Chancellor,
and the scene in his High Court, " Begludship's
pardon," is represented by Dutch words
run into one another, and so that point may
possibly have been seized; but I tremble
when I think of Jo, and the Inkwich, and
Tom's All-alone. In what dictionary extant
will our poor Dutch Hodman find
Inkwich ?

To look again a little closer at the social
ways of my Dutchman,—what does he, with
his misbehaved Mynheers, and Ne'er-do-
wells ? A serious question to touch at this
present time, when the world is all agog of
Reformatory notion—Mettray, Silent System,
and Mr. Recorder Hill.

Without having gone systematically to
the work, or obtaining tabular statements
from governors of asylums and such places,
or indeed in any manner affecting to do
more than graze the subject, it must be
granted that Mynheer has some queer notions
as to the treatment of his Ne'er-do-wells:
to say nothing of the great Dig-in-the-Fields
principle, carried out at those penal settlements
the world has often heard of; where
the land becomes a criminal country, bearing
criminal crops and criminal verdure,
and sends out criminal wares, and is
altogether teeming with genial Botany Bay
influences; within a stone's throw, too, were
the non-criminal world, from which the
innocent Mynheer may look complacently from
afar off at the Dismal Swamp, where his
brother reclaims bog and polder all day long
—and eventually reclaims himself it is to be
hoped. This Bog Reformatory, however, the
world knows of pretty well. But without
touching on such matters as schedule, dietary
scale, able-bodied adults, and the like, a few
broad facts may be stated here as to Mynheer's
gaol discipline generally.

He does not hang his brother upon a tree.
He objects constitutionally to thus dealing
capitally with his brother. The dungeon is
the panacea. Little crime, little dungeon:
greater crime, more dungeon. Dungeon, in a
word, quan. suf. He mostly classes his
prisoners, per delicta, or offences—which may
be proper enough: but unhappily he has no
subdivision for the respective ages. Thus,
old and young, boy matriculated, and man
graduated, are jumbled together to equalise
their attainments. This is a fatal system, as
all who have thought upon the matter must
see at a glance. Further, the public transgressions
are visited with confinement, as has been
mentioned; but infraction of the prison laws
is punished with singular rigour. Solitary
confinement is the popular vindication of such
infringement; up at Leowarden is a strong
place, compassed about with strong walls,
where the wicked do penance for their sins.
All arrangements seem decent and wholesome
until the stranger is led down into a
place that looks like the bear pit in the
Zoological Gardens. At one side of the pit
are low arched doors like the entrance to
Bruin's lodgings, covered up with a thick
iron grating, through which may be made
out indistinct figures, coiled up in corners,
like wild beasts in their dens, seemingly
insensible to all things outside. That row
of gratings and caged men is a horrible
sight—more horrible when it is known that
some are kept thus for life. Many more
for long terms of years. Those grated arches
suggest vault entrances as well as Bruin's
den—only, vaults for the living. There
results, strange to say, not that insanity
or melancholy madness, which is popularly
expected; but a certain dull insensibility and
unconsciousness. Can such system be wholesome
as a warning or terror to those outside;
which, indeed, is the aim of all punishment;
for how shall evil-doers outside know and
have conviction of the horrors of that solitary
Bruin's den ? Better, perhaps, that old
hanging on a tree, or Mr. Philips's nostrum
of the high place, to be seen by all the
country round, and the gloomy black flag
waving over it eternally.

A friend of his, who now writes, was taken
over one of these gloomy asylums, by a
gentleman of easy manners and fluent
address. He might have been an ancient
emigré Abbé, his whole air was so gentle;
with that dash of the Père Noble, which to
the very last cleaves to the Frenchman
stricken in years. He was filled with noble
thoughts, and descanted fluently on the sad
disorganisation of society then prevalent.
How men who had once swerved from the
straight path, continued to grow worse and
worse, until sunk hopelessly in iniquity. He
pointed out feelingly how it was these small
beginnings made prisons overflow; how,
if men could but guard themselves against
the approaches of crime all would be well.
He shook his head profoundly as he showed