The paintings in the entrance of this uppermost gallery were of ‘Shields’ on one side, and ‘Sunderland’ on the other. That of Shields was a view of colliers in the river by moonlight, with a dull sky of indigo blue, and smoky clouds—very well done, and truthful, having a sufficient mixture of reality for the nature of the subject, and of fancy for the picturesque. The picture of Sunderland, with its one-arched iron bridge, which is so high above the water, that a collier can pass underneath without striking her topmasts, is also a night scene; but by torch-light; the red flashes of which fall upon a train of little upright waggons full of coals, coming from the pit to be shipped. The panels round this gallery are adorned with paintings of gigantic ferns, fragments of the trunks of the lepidodendron, and the sigillaria, and other stems and foliage of those antediluvian plants and trees which subsequently contributed most largely to the coal formations. These paintings are interspersed with various miners’ tools, above which rises the glass dome of the building. Descending the well-staircase, we asked Captain Oldcastle what capital he thought was employed by the great coal owners on the Tyne and Wear. He said—quoting his friend Buddle again, as authority—that they could not have embarked less than a million and a half of money, without reckoning any of the vessels on the river; but taking these into the account, the capital employed would not amount to less than between eight and ten millions. And this estimate was made by Buddle twenty years ago! THE GREAT PENAL EXPERIMENTS. Prison Life, like life in all other circumstances, has its extremes; and these have been pushed to the farthest verge of contrast by the ‘great experiments’ that have lately been essayed. There is an aristocracy of prisoners, and a commonality of prisoners; there are palace prisons, and kennel prisons in which it would be cruelty to confine refractory dogs. We have hardened criminals put into training in Model Prisons for pattern penitence, and novices in crime thrust into dens with the most depraved felons; so as to bring them down in morals to the lowest practicable level. The study of some of these extremes is instructive. It shows what results have been produced by the ‘great experiments’ which have been tried; either how much reform they have effected; or how many misdemeanants they are likely to add to the already over-populated dangerous class. For the sake of impartiality we shall in each instance offer no description of our own; but we intend to cite what has already been in print.