he penalty of horse-stealing; one
was yet a boy. In one cell sat a poor servant girl; they said she
had no relations, and was poor, and they placed her here. I thought
that I had misunderstood, repeated my question, Why is the maiden
here? and received the same answer. Yet still I prefer to believe
that I have misunderstood the remark. Without, in the clear, free
sunlight, is the busy rush of day; here within the stillness of
midnight always reigns. The spider, which spins along the wall, the
swallow, which rarely flies near the vaulted window there above,
even the tread of the stranger in the gallery, close by the door,
is an occurrence in this mute, solitary life, where the mind of the
prisoner revolves ever upon himself. One should read of the martyr
cells of the holy inquisition, of the unfortunates of the Bagnio
chained to each other, of the hot leaden chambers, and the dark wet
abyss of the pit of Venice, and shudder over those pictures, in
order to wander through the galleries of the cell prison with a
calmer heart; here is light, here is air, here it is more human.
Here, where the sunbeam throws in upon the prisoner its mild light,
here will an illuminating beam from God Himself sink into the
heart.'

Last we have

'SALA.

'Sweden's great king, Germany's deliverer, Gustavus Adolphus,
caused Sala to be built. The small enclosed wood in the vicinity of
the little town relates to us yet traditions of the youthful love
of the hero king, of his rendezvous with Ebba Brahe. The silver
shafts at Sala are the largest, the deepest and oldest in Sweden;
they reach down a hundred and seventy fathoms, almost as deep as
the Baltic. This is sufficient to awaken an interest in the little
town; how does it look now? 'Sala,' says the guide book, 'lies in a
valley, in a flat, and not very agreeable region.' And so it is
truly; in that direction was nothing beautiful, and the highway led
directly into the town, which has no character. It consists of a
single long street with a knot and a pair of ends: the knot is the
market; at the ends are two lanes which are attached to it. The
long street--it may be called long in such a short town--was
entirely empty. No one came out of the doors, no one looked out of
the windows. It was with no small joy that I sa