There is another equally incorrigible class, who commit greater crimes, but not chiefly for the sake of "punishment." Detectives keep themselves advised of the sentences of these offenders, and prepare to shadow them anew whenever they are released from confinement. It is not expected that incarceration will have any reformatory effect. The question of reforming them, as of reforming those who offend to get rid of the trouble of taking care of themselves, comes to be left out of consideration, after a little experience, by the officers whose duty it is to deal with them. Only intimidation remains for a considerable number. With these, rather than with the English window-breaker, should probably be classed the subject of this item from a late newspaper: "Charles Dickens is dead, and died of honest work; but the German prisoner, Charles Langheimer, whom he saw in the penitentiary at Philadelphia thirty-three years ago, and over whose punishment by solitary confinement he lamented in 'American Notes,' describing him as 'a picture of forlorn affliction and distress of mind,' still lives at the age of seventy-five, and has just been sent back to his old quarters the sixth time, for his chronic offence of petty theft, which has kept him in jail full half his long life." That punishment for crime is necessary, and therefore a public duty, is admitted, and every community professes to impose it. But what of the criminals whom punishment as now administered does not punish--who actually commit crimes for the purpose of receiving it? It would seem that society has not the power or has not the wisdom to protect itself. It has the right, of course. It has the power also. The law does not succeed in what it attempts and professes to do. At present when we find a criminal who has sufficient good in him to feel our methods, we punish him in proportion to his--goodness. When we find one so vile that our methods are like water on a duck's back, we do not punish him--except as water punishes a duck. He goes unpunished because he is so bad, while a better man is punished because he is better. What is this but rewarding insensibility? It is very creditable to the hearts of the lawmakers--perhaps--but it is fraud on the community. It is legalized wickedness. It permits incarnate nuisances to wax fat, and prey upon honest industry, and increase and multiply, until they become the only prosperous and protected class.