As such, they were justly obnoxious to criticism and censure. Thanks to the good men who interfered to arrest this design! Thanks to our Secretary, whose early energies were rightly directed to this end! The soul shrinks with horror from the cell of constant and unoccupied solitude, as repugnant to unceasing yearnings in the nature of man. The "leads" of Venice, the cruel cages of state prisoners, inspire us with indignation against that heartless republic. The terrors of the Bastile, whether revealed in the pictured page of Victor Hugo, or in the grave descriptions of dungeons where toads and rats made their home, contain nothing to fill us with such dread as the unbroken solitude which was the lot of many of its victims. Lafayette--whose own experience at Olmütz should not be forgotten--has furnished his testimony of its melancholy influence, as apparent in the condition of those who suddenly came forth, on the morning which dawned upon the destruction of that gloomy prison. Almost in our own time their sufferings have been revived in the Austrian dungeons of Spielberg; and Silvio Pellico has left to the literature of mankind the record of horrors filling the perpetual solitude of his cell, which he vainly strove to relieve by crying out to the iron bars of his window, to the hills in the distance, and to the birds which sported with freedom in the air. A system of absolute solitude excludes every rational idea of health, improvement, or reformation. It is an engine of cruelty and tyranny kindred to the iron boot, the thumb-screw, the iron glove, and other terrible instruments of a vengeance-loving government. It hardens, abases, or overthrows the intellect and character. Such a punishment is justly rejected in a Christian age, learning to temper justice with mercy, and to regard the reformation of the offender among its essential aims.