Sustained then by my own personal experience and observation, I say _fearlessly_, that the solitary confinement plan, is an unwise, unfeeling, and ruinous innovation upon the Penitentiary discipline. Every body knows that it adds to the terror of such places; evinces a cruel recklessness of the feelings and personal comfort of the prisoner; and has the effect to convince him that the government is not his friend. This destroys his confidence in its mercy, and creates in him a disposition for revenge, which will eternally baffle all efforts for his reformation. He may, indeed, be awed with the gloomy horrors of the law, but cannot, by _such_ means, be regenerated into a love of virtue. No; before you can do any thing towards reforming a sinner, you must convince him of your real friendship for him, which can be done only by _being_ friendly; and it is _not_ being friendly to inflict pain without a benevolent motive. The construction of ordinary prisons is full cruel enough to fill the soul with terror; no _friend_ would build even such a place as Windsor prison _was_, for one he loved, and no human being could suppose that love and friendship for the human race, had any thing to do in forming its plan. Should an angel from some happy world, in his flight near our earth, pause and contemplate the old prison at Windsor, he would hasten back and inform his companions that he had seen a _hell_. That place was designed or ignorantly constructed, as a fit house in which Revenge might feed in luxury on the tears of distress, and dance to the groans of despair. Every prisoner could read the spirit of the place in the massy walls--the iron grates and doors--and the noonday twilight of the cells; and the impression on every mind was, that the spirits of the infernal world had been erecting a very appropriate Temple for their chief. This is neither fiction, fancy, nor poetry, but solemn literal truth. The deathly chill which it threw on my spirits when I entered it, makes me shudder to this hour. But the _new_ prison caps the climax of relentless invention, and sets description at defiance. Now, I say, that no prisoner can suppose by any reach of rational candor, that the builders of this _new_ prison, were his friends; and hence all efforts, purporting to spring from a tender regard for his good, will be appreciated accordingly.