THE AUTHOR. _Boston, April_, 1834. GEHENNA IN MINIATURE. ORIGIN OF PRISONS. Egypt is said to have been the cradle of letters; and happy had it been for her history, if she had never cradled any thing worse. There are the first and oldest pyramids, the sphynxes, and the labyrinths; and there was erected the first prison of which history has taken notice. A cruel and heartless people, they deserve the infamy of corrupting the principles of penal justice, and of transforming their prisons into theatres of the most fiend-like barbarity, and unhallowed revenge. With the same spirit which led the scholar to pry into the hieroglyphic mysteries of this land of wonders, has the genius of her prison discipline been copied by the nations of the earth, till the whole world is filled with these terrestrial hells. But as this sketch leads me rather to the contemplation of _Penitentiaries_ than prisons in general, I shall turn my thoughts to them in _particular_. ORIGIN AND DESIGN OF PENITENTIARIES, WITH A VIEW OF THEIR IMPERFECTIONS. These lurid and doleful mansions, owe their existence to the sinfulness and depravity of man; and they are designed, by a mild and salutary process, to reform the sons of guilt and crime. Long experience had demonstrated, that sanguinary measures produced no _good_ effect on the sufferers, but rather made them _worse_. Humanity, too, recoiled from the cruelty of such inflictions as the lash, and the brand; and as the effect of such severity was no argument for its continuance, humane legislators devised the _Penitentiary_ system, by which criminals are confined to labor, and _should_ be allowed full opportunities of reflecting on their conduct, and of reforming their lives. And as the design is to have them treated with kindness, and allowed all the means of moral and religious instruction and improvement, that man can furnish, the benevolent hope of the community is, that their sufferings, thus tempered with mercy and humanity, will be salutary and reforming in its effects. Mercy and benevolence were the inspiring angels of this system, and could it ever be brought practically to bear on offending man, it would produce a salutary reform in his heart and life.