Such is the general history of the prison up to 1830, when a new prison, on the plan of solitary confinement, was erected. This contains about one hundred and seventy small cells, in which the prisoners are confined separately during the night. No radical alteration, I apprehend, has been made in the government of the place, in any other respect. The design of this change was, to prevent the prisoners from corrupting each other's minds by social intercourse. The principle laid down by the votaries of this plan, is, that vice is contagious, and wicked men become worse by association. The more abandoned, it is said, will draw down others to their own degree of guilt, if permitted to associate together, and thus baffle all the efforts of piety and virtue for their reformation. Hence the presumptive necessity for a prison on a new construction, and hence the prison for solitary confinement in Windsor. I _hope_ it will be so managed as to prove a less curse to humanity than the old one, though it is like hoping _against_ hope. In respect to its _reforming_ effect, I shall say more in another article; but I will remark here, that reformation is a _moral_ work, and depends not on the _shape_ of the person's _room_. It is a work of _mercy_, and nothing but mercy can _effect_ it. Man is a social being, and the laws of his nature are violated by dooming him to solitude. The genius of crime dwells in the dark places of retirement, and always communes with its followers _alone_. Social life, on the contrary, is the garden of every virtue, in which nothing but flowers are permitted to flourish, and nothing but good fruit permitted to ripen when properly cultivated. SOLITARY CONFINEMENT. I ought to touch this subject with a delicate hand. Many giants of speculation have been this way, and they have laid down principles from which I am compelled to dissent. I am well aware of the charm of greatness, and of the danger of appearing singular with those on whom the mantle of popular veneration has been seen to fall; and I feel that in the strictures which I am commencing, I shall gain no applause from those who are kindly delivered from labor of thinking for themselves. This weighs, however, but little with me. A being who has visited the moon knows more about it than astronomers have ever taught. A man who has burned his finger knows more of the effect of fire on flesh, than the most eloquent lecturer who has had no experience. Confident, then, that my own experience may be safely trusted, I shall follow it cheerfully, whether it lead me _in_ the path which speculation has trodden, or _across_ it. BACON lays it down as a principle in philosophy, that man is ignorant of every thing antecedent to observation, and that experience is at the bottom of all our knowledge. To this principle I bow in submission, and take it for granted that what I have experienced I know.