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 safe-guards 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 labor 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.