On a rising ground opposite the town-house is the old jail of York. I have deemed it worthy a passing notice. It is a quaint old structure, and has held many culprits in former times, when York was the seat of justice for the county, though it would not keep your modern burglar an hour. It is perched, like a bird of ill omen, on a rocky ledge, where all might see it in passing over the high-road. Thus, in the early day, the traveler on entering the county town encountered, first, the stocks and whipping-post; continuing his route, he in due time came to the gallows, at the town's end. The exterior of the jail is not especially repulsive, now that it is no longer a prison; but the inside is a relic of barbarism--just such a place as I have often imagined the miserable witchcraft prisoners might have been confined in. The back wall is of stone. The doors are six inches of solid oak, studded with heavy nails; the gratings secured with the blades of mill saws, having the jagged teeth upward; the sills, locks, and bolts are ponderous, and unlike any thing the present century has produced. [Illustration: PILLORY.] The dungeons, of which there are two, admitted no ray of light except when the doors were opened; and these doors were of two thicknesses of oaken planks banded between with plates of iron, and on the outside with rusty blades of mill saws, as were also the crevices through which the jailer passed bread and water to the wretched criminals. The gloom and squalor of these _cachots_ oppressed the spirits of even the casual visitor, free to come and go at pleasure; what must it, then, have been to the wretches condemned to inhabit them? Above these dungeons were two or three cells, secured by precautions similar to those below; while other apartments were reserved for the jailer's use. The house was inhabited, and children were playing about the floor. I fancied their merry laughter issuing from solitary dungeons where nothing but groans and imprecations had once been heard. Perchance there have been Hester Prynnes and Cassandra Southwicks immured within these walls. [Illustration: STOCKS.] As I never feel quite at home within a prison, I made haste to get into the open air again. I noticed, what is common in the country, that an underpinning of boards had been placed around the foundation at the distance of a foot, the space within being filled with earth. "That," said a whimsical fellow, "is to keep the coarsest of the cold out." They have a jail at Alfred hardly more secure than the old. I was told of a prisoner who coolly informed the jailer one morning that if he did not supply him with better victuals he would not stay another day. He was as good as his word, making his escape soon after. Wagner, the Isles of Shoals murderer, also broke jail at Alfred, but was recaptured.