and perform the service in the chapel, and evening schools are
provided, at which the chaplains attend to teach reading, writing, and
arithmetic. A library of books of general information is provided for
the prisoner's use, and to each a Bible is given, and they are allowed
to buy sound and useful books. They have each a gas lamp in their cell,
which enables them to read there when their work is done, and they are
allowed to see their friends in the presence of an officer. Sixty of the
prisoners were Negroes, which is a large proportion when compared with
the total numbers of the white and black population, especially as the
blacks are often let off, owing to the leniency of the committing
magistrates who have compassion on their inferior intelligence; and it
is owing, it is said, to a like leniency that there are so few females,
though certainly not for the same reason. There are a large number of
Irish in the prison.

Our next visit, still under Mr. Dennison's escort, was to the Capitol or
State House, a very fine building of white limestone. The facade is more
than 300 feet long, and the height nearly 160 feet to the top of the
dome. This however has not yet been completed. The architecture is
Grecian. Here, as at Washington, are Halls for the Senate and House of
Representatives, in equally good taste and somewhat similarly arranged.
Mr. Dennison, who had once been a member of the Senate, was repudiating
the accounts so commonly given of the behaviour of the senators, when
Mr. Niel came in, and over-hearing what he was saying, begged to remark
that when they "went to work" they usually divested themselves of their
coats without substituting any senatorial garment in its place; and
putting his legs on the desk before the chair, he declared that such was
the usual posture in which they listened to the oratory of the place.[8]

We afterwards went through the apartments appropriated to the Treasurer
and Auditor of the State, the two chief officers of the Government,
which are very capacious and well fitted up--and we were specially
introduced to both these functionaries; Mr. Neil, who is somewhat of a
wag, was rather jocose with them, and high as their position here is,
they very cordially retaliated on him. We next went to those
appropriated to the Governor of the State, General Chase, in order that
we might be introduced to him, but he was out, which we regretted. He is
a candidate to succeed Mr. Buchanan as President.