the hither side of this gulf
of years, and that they were not the reasonless barbarians that we
think them to have been. And if they were, what must have been the
unreason and barbarity of the criminal element with which they had to
deal?

I am far from thinking that severity of punishment can have the same
restraining effect as probability of some punishment being inflicted;
but if mildness of penalty is to be superadded to difficulty of
conviction, and both are to be mounted upon laxity in detection, the
pile will be complete indeed. There is a peculiar fitness, perhaps, in
the fact that all these pleas for comfortable punishment should be urged
at a time when there appears to be a general disposition to inflict no
punishment at all. There are, however, still a few old-fashioned persons
who hold it obvious that one who is ambitious to break the laws of his
country will not with so light a heart and so airy an indifference incur
the peril of a harsh penalty as he will the chance of one more nearly
resembling that which he would himself select.

V

After lying for more than a century dead I was revived, dowered with a
new body, and restored to society. The first thing of interest that I
observed was an enormous building, covering a square mile of ground. It
was surrounded on all sides by a high, strong wall of hewn stone upon
which armed sentinels paced to and fro. In one face of the wall was a
single gate of massive iron, strongly guarded. While admiring the
Cyclopean architecture of the "reverend pile" I was accosted by a man in
uniform, evidently the warden, with a cheerful salutation.

"Colonel," I said, "pray tell me what is this building."

"This," said he, "is the new state penitentiary. It is one of twelve,
all alike."

"You surprise me," I replied. "Surely the criminal element must have
increased enormously."

"Yes, indeed," he assented; "under the Reform _regime_, which began in
your day, crime became so powerful, bold and fierce that arrests were no
longer possible and the prisons then in existence were soon overcrowded.
The state was compelled to erect others of greater capacity."

"But, Colonel," I protested, "if the criminals were too bold and
powerful to be taken into custody, of what use are the prisons? And how
are they crowded?"

He fixed upon me a look that I could not fail to interpret as expressing
a doubt of my sanity. "What!" he said, "is it possible that the modern
penology is unkno