821 The Penitentiary of Sing Sing. "The convicts are awakened at sunrise by a bell; but before they are let out, the clergyman of the establishment reads a prayer from a station so chosen, that without effort he can readily make himself heard by all the prisoners on that side of the building, that is, to say, by four hundred, or one-half of the number confined. The turnkeys now open the doors, and a word of command being given, each of the prisoners steps out of his cell into the gallery. They are then formed into a close line, and made to march with what is called the lock step, with their eyes turned towards the keeper, along the passages to the work-shops. On leaving the building, the different divisions or gangs under the several turnkeys make a short halt in the outer yard, to wash their hands and faces, and also to deposit their tubs and watercans, which are taken up by another set of prisoners, whose duty it is to attend to the cleansing department of the household. Another party of the prisoners attend to the cooking; another to washing clothes; in short, the whole work is done by the convicts. The main body of the prisoners are then marched to their fixed tasks; some to hew stone or to saw marble, some to forge iron, some to weave cloth; while others are employed as tailors, shoemakers, coopers, and in various other trades. Each shop is under the charge of a turnkey, of course not a convict, but a man of character, and known to be trustworthy, who, besides other qualifications, is required to be master of the business there taught; for his duty is not only to enforce the closest attention to the rules of the prison, and in particular that of the most rigorous silence, but he has to instruct the men under his charge in some trade. The prisoners, when in these work-shops, are placed in rows, with their faces all turned in one direction, so that they cannot communicate by looks or signs. Each turnkey has not less than twenty, nor more than thirty men, under his charge; and it is found that one man, stimulated by a good salary, or by other adequate motives to do his duty, and who is duly supported, can perfectly well enforce these regulations upon that number of persons. "The general superintendent of the prison has a most ingenious method of watching, not only the prisoners, but also the turnkeys. A narrow dark passage runs along the back part of all the work-shops, from whence the convicts sitting at their tasks, as well as their turnkeys, can be distinctly seen through narrow slits in the wall, half an inch wide, and covered with glass, 822 while the superintendent himself can neither be seen nor heard by the prisoners, or by their keepers. The consciousness that a vigilant eye may at any given moment be fixed upon them, is described as being singularly efficacious in keeping the attention of all parties awake, to an extent which no visible and permanent scrutiny, I am told, has the power of commanding. "At a fixed hour (eight, I believe) a bell is rung, upon which all work is discontinued; the prisoners again form themselves into a close line under their turnkey, and when the order is given to march, they return back to their cells. Each one now stops before his door, with his hands by his side, motionless and silent like a statue, till directed by a signal to stoop down for his breakfast, which has been previously placed for him on the floor of the gallery. They next turn about, and march in, after which the iron doors of their cells are locked upon them, while they take their comfortless meal in solitude. At Auburn, where this system was first put in operation, it was the practice at the time of my visit, to allow the prisoners to eat their meals in company. But experience having shown that even this degree of sociability, trifling as it was, did some harm, and that much good was gained by compelling them to mess alone, the plan above described has, I believe, been introduced in all the other similar establishments in America, of which I am glad to say, there are now a great many. "After twenty minutes have elapsed, the prisoners are marched to their work, which goes on in the same uninterrupted style till noon, when they are paraded once more to their cells, where they take their lock-up, unsociable dinner, and then pace back again to their dull silent round of hard labour. On the approach of night, the prisoners are made to wash their hands and faces as they did in the morning on leaving their cells, and then, as before, at the sound of the yard bell, to form themselves into lines, each one standing in order according to the number of his night's quarters. As they pass through the yard they take up their cans and tubs, and proceed finally for this day to their cell doors, where their supper of mush and molasses, a preparation of Indian corn meal, awaits them as before. At a fixed hour they are directed by a bell to undress and go to bed; but just before this, and as nearly at sunset as may be, prayers are said by the resident clergyman. It is very important to know from the best qualified local authorities, that the efficacy of this practice, 823 On the Grandeur of American Antiquities. considered as a branch of prison discipline, and independently of its other valuable considerations, has been found very great. ON THE GRANDEUR AND MORAL INTEREST OF AMERICAN ANTIQUITIES. (By T. Flint.) "You will expect me to say something of the lonely records of the former races that inhabited this country. That there has formerly been a much more numerous population than exists here at present, I am fully impressed, from the result of my own personal observations. From the highest points of the Ohio to where I am now writing, and far up the upper Mississippi and Missouri, the more the country is explored and peopled, and the more its surface is penetrated, not only are there more mounds brought to view, but more incontestable marks of a numerous population. * * "Wells, artificially walled, different structures of convenience or defence, have been found in such numbers, as no longer to excite curiosity. Ornaments of silver and of copper, pottery, of which I have seen numberless specimens on all those waters, not to mention the mounds themselves, and the still more tangible evidence of human bodies found in a state of preservation, and of sepulchres full of bones, -are unquestionable demonstrations, that this country was once possessed of a numerous population. The mounds themselves, though of earth, are not those rude and shapeless heaps, that they_have been commonly represented to be. I have seen, for instance, in different parts of the Atlantic country, the breast-works and other defences of earth, that were thrown up by our people during the war of the revolu tion. None of those mountains date back more than fifty years. These mounds must date back to remote depths in the olden time. "From the ages of the trees on them, and from other data, we can trace them back six hundred years, leaving it entirely to the imagination to descend farther into the depths of time beyond. And yet, after the rains, the washing, and the crumbling of so many ages, many of them are still twenty-five feet high. All of them are, incomparably, more conspicuous monuments than the works which I just noticed. Some of them are spread over an extent of acres. I have seen, great and small, I should suppose, a hundred. Though diverse in position and form, they all have a uniform character. "They are, for the most part, in rich soils, and in conspicuous situations. Those 824 on the Ohio are covered with very large trees. But, in the prairie regions, where I have seen the greatest numbers, they are covered with tall grass, and generally large benches,-which indicate the former courses of the rivers,-in the finest situations for present culture; and the greatest population clearly has been in those very positions, where the most dense future population will be. * * * "The English, when they sneer at our country, speak of it as sterile in moral interest. It has,' say they, 'no monuments, no ruins, none of the massive remains of former ages; no castles, no mouldering abbeys, no baronial towers and dungeons; nothing to connect the imagination and the heart with the past; no recollections of former ages, to associate the past with the future.' "But I have been attempting sketches of the largest and most fertile valley in the world, larger, in fact, than half of Europe, all its remotest points being brought into proximity by a stream, which runs the length of that continent, and to which all but two or three of the rivers of Europe are but rivulets. Its forests make a respectable figure, even placed beside Blenheim park. "We have lakes which could find a place for the Cumberland lakes in the hollow of one of their islands. We have prairies, which have struck me as among the sublimest prospects in nature. There we see the sun rising over a boundless plain, where the blue of the heavens, in all directions, touches and mingles with the verdure of the flowers. It is to me a view far more glorious than that on which the sun rises on a barren and angry waste of sea. The one is soft, cheerful, associated with life, and requires an easier effort of the imagination to travel beyond the eye. The other is grand, but dreary, desolate, and always ready to destroy. "In the most pleasing positions of these prairies, we have our Indian mounds, which proudly rise above the plain. At first the eye mistakes them for hills; but when it catches the regularity of their breast-works and ditches, it discovers at once that they are the labours of art and of men. "When the evidence of the senses convinces us that human bones moulder in these masses; when you dig about them, and bring to light their domestic utensils; and are compelled to believe, that the busy tide of life once flowed here; when you see, at once, that these races were of a very different character from the present generation,-you begin to inquire if any y tradi 825 Remarks on News, Newspapers, &c. 826 tion, if any, the faintest, records can throw | little by the public in general. The latter, any light upon these habitations of men of another age. "Is there no scope, besides these mounds, for imagination, and for contemplation of the past? The men, their joys, their sorrows, their bones, are all buried together. But the grand features of nature remain. There is the beautiful prairie, over which they strutted through life's poor play.' The forests, the hills, the mounds, lift their heads in unalterable repose, and furnish the same sources of contemplation to us, that they did to those generations that have passed away. 6 "It is true, we have little reason to suppose that they were the guilty dens of petty tyrants, who let loose their half savage vassals to burn, plunder, enslave, and despoil an adjoining den. There are no remains of the vast and useless monasteries, where ignorant and lazy monks dreamed over their lusts, or meditated their vile plans of acquisition and imposture. "Here must have been a race of men, on these charming plains, that had every call from the scenes that surrounded them, to contented existence and tranquil meditation. Unfortunate, as men view the thing, they must have been. Innocent and peaceful they probably were; for, had they been reared amidst wars and quarrels, like the present Indians, they would, doubtless, have maintained their ground, and their posterity would have remained to this day. Beside them moulder the huge bones of their contemporary beasts, which must have been of thrice the size of the elephant. "I cannot judge of the recollections excited by castles and towers that I have not seen. But I have seen all of grandeur, which our cities can display. I have seen, too, these lonely tombs of the desert,seen them rise from these boundless and unpeopled plains. My imagination and my heart have been full of the past. The nothingness of the brief dream of human life has forced itself upon my mind. The unknown race, to which these bones belonged, had, I doubt not, as many projects of ambition, and hoped, as sanguinely, to have their names survive, as the great ones of the present day." REMARKS ON NEWS, NEWSPAPERS, &c. In no science, profession, trade, or manufacture, perhaps, so much as in the art of printing, has the spirit of enterprize and improvement been manifested, unattended by any particular announcement on the part of the individuals concerned, or regarded so of course, know but little of the way in which news is collected, or newspapers are got up, and care as little, so long as they receive their accustomed paper at the appointed hour in the morning or evening, and find in it how things are going on at home or abroad, in the east, the west, the north, and the south; and yet, perhaps, our readers may not be displeased with some little information on the subject, given by one whose "daily bread" is gathered from this, among the millions of ways open to the inhabitants of this vast metropolis. It would appear to a person unacquainted with the printing business, that the vast number of newspapers now circulated, when compared with the circulation of former years, would give employment to a greater number of printers in the two distinct branches of that business. The contrary, however, is the case. In former years one individual would be proprietor of one paper, and another of another; and it was a rare thing to find two or more newspapers got up in the same office. Now matters are entirely changed, and one individual will be proprietor of two, three, four, or more newspapers; all, or nearly all, got together by one set of hands, instead of each having a distinct office, and a distinct number of men regularly engaged in its preparation. This evil, (for evil it has been, and is, to the journeyman, though productive of an incalculable profit to the master,) has arisen from a variety of causes, among the foremost of which is the saving of time by steam-printing. The mighty powers of steam, and its adaptation to the purposes of printing, are little known and understood by the public. Formerly, the proprietor of a newspaper was satisfied with a moderate, of course a paying, circulation, for this reason,-that the physical powers of his men and the construction of his printingpresses would not allow more than a certain number of impressions in a given period of time; and in a daily paper, for instance, only a certain number could be printed, up to the hour of publication. But the introduction of steam gave a new turn and impulse to the whole affair. The number of impressions produced in the old mode, by manual labour, 'varied from 200 to 300 per hour, but steam will produce from 800 to 1200; consequently where four hours were before consumed, one is now only required. Then speculation and competition in no ordinary degree arose; the hundreds a paper circulated were as quickly as possible trebled; numerous newspapers, of limited circula 827 An Audience of the Pacha of Egypt. 828 tion, were bought up at enormous prices, | This number will be found absolutely neand merged into others, giving one paper cessary to ensure despatch, when we contwo or three titles or headings-printing esta- sider that we can see, at six o'clock in the blishments were broken up-and journey-morning, the proceedings of the house of men, of course, obliged to seek employment lords or commons, amounting perhaps to in other channels-the masters pocketed an 15 or 16 columns, and at the end of the enormous revenue-and the public were no same "The house adjourned at 3 o'clock." gainers by the change, the newspaper con- The persons employed on morning papers tinuing at the same price it was before. consequently retire to rest when others are getting up. This is not the only evil the introduction of steam has brought to the journeyman printer: a more important one is yet to be noticed. In consequence of the speed with which printing is now executed, it soon of course occurred to the masters, (and it is now carried on to a considerable extent,) that two or three papers might easily be made up out of one collection of type. This is performed in the following simple manner:- -A newspaper with a certain title is put to press, and the usual number of its circulation printed off-say a thousand; this occupies an hour. During this hour the editor may be employed in writing, and the compositors in putting together, any thing additional that may be brought in through the various channels of information open to the establishment. The first paper being printed off, is removed to the place of publication-the type taken away-the other certain title got ready-a moving and shifting of different articles of news takes place an alteration of appearance is made as much as possible; and thus a morning paper may be turned into an evening paper; two or three evening papers got up from one collection of type; or two, three, or four weekly papers "made up" out of perhaps a daily evening or a morning journal.-This is no exaggeration; many individuals out of the printing business, have noticed and remarked,―say a glaring or a curious blunder made in one paper, appearing in another-and found in a third: their astonishment is excited; but it ceases, on their being told that one set of men, and one set of type, do the whole of the business of these different newspapers. The expenses attending evening papers are much less, though even in some of these they are very considerable. When morning papers are published, evening papers are commenced. The editor of an evening paper has before him all the morning journals. The news in each is public propertythe scissors consequently are his best and most intimate friend-here he culls all that pleases his fancy, or that he thinks will please his readers; and thus, with the assistance of some few reports of circumstances occurring during the morning, his news is obtained in a much cheaper way. It happens, however, sometimes, that what is obtained and paid very heavily for, is copied into the papers the following morning, and thus a mutual exchange is made beneficial to both parties. It is known that one article only, say 40 or 50 lines, has, in time of war, when sent by express, cost the proprietors 50 or £60.; and the salary of a clever evening-paper editor rises sometimes so high as £20 per week. 入. AN AUDIENCE OF THE PACHA OF EGYPT. THE following extract is from an intelligent work recently published by Mr. Madden, a medical gentleman, who has lately travelled through Turkey. "After the presents were extolled by all the court, I shewed his highness the manner of winding the musical clocks, which he seemed much pleased with, and repeatedly exclaimed Mashallah,' God is great. "You hakkims,' he said, 6 can do every A description of the varied sources and thing; you can mend people's bodies and vast expenditure of a morning paper, for wind clocks, Mashallah!' This was inthe different articles of news it contains, tended for a witticism, and all the Chriswould occupy too much of our space. The tian_parasites accordingly laughed at the expense of postage alone, in many offices, good thing his highness' said. We got would cause a look of incredulity and asto- coffee, but no pipes. Sir Hudson Lowe nishment, leaving out the money paid to was one of the last persons who had a pipe reporters, (generally about 1d. for every at the Pacha's. The cancelliere, who sat line furnished) or the two, three, or four by me, repeatedly told me not to sit at my hundreds per year paid to others regularly ease, but to rest on the very edge of the belonging to the establishment, and that divan, as the other Franks did; for,' said establishment of reporters alone consisting he, when Sir Hudson visited his highness, perhaps, especially during the sitting of he sat in such a respectful manner, that he parliament, of eight or ten individuals. | hardly touched the seat; and his highness 829 Greeks and Turks compared. remarked it when he was gone, and said, there never was an Englishman of so much talent in his presence before.' It was the first time I had heard of the seat of knowledge being situated in the os sacrum; and as I was not ambitious of supplanting the ex-governor of St. Helena in the good opinion of a Mussulman, I continued to sit as any English gentleman might have done in the presence of a Turkish soldier. "The first theme of conversation was the siege of Bhurtpore. The Pacha asked me if it were true, that the English had taken the city, and massacred the garrison? Mr. Salt replied, there was no doubt of the place being taken; and as the garrison had refused quarter, that many had lost their lives. The Pacha burst out laughing; 'Oh,' said he, 'you are clever people in England; you go to war in India; you massacre garrisons; you do as you like with your prisoners, and no one talks against you; no one points at your red swords; but my people kill a few giaours in Missolunghi, and all Franguestan cries out murder; every Christian calls my son Ibrahim a bloodhound.' Mr. Salt had the politeness to declare, he never heard any one say so; he appealed to me; of course I could not hear any thing which my consul heard not; but the Pacha believed neither of us, and he continued to talk about Bhurtpore and Missolunghi, and to ring the changes on Missolunghi and Bhurtpore for half an hour. I observed that he had a French newspaper by his side, which, no doubt, one of his interpre ters had been translating to him, for he knows no language but Turkish, not even Arabic; and has only lately learned to write his name. "He must also have been informed of something in the newspaper about the Pope, for on our leaving the room, when Mr. Salt demanded a private conference with him, instead of the business Mr. Salt wished to discuss, he began talking of his holiness. And so the people kiss his toe,' he said. 'How extraordinary to him to kiss a mufti's toe. If I went to Rome, would they compel me to kiss his toe?' Mr. Salt assured him, he might go to Rome whenever he pleased, without kissing any part of his holiness; and that the English had a mufti of their own, or at least a head of the church, but his toes were never kissed. 'Oh, I know it,' cried Mohammed Ali; you do not belong to the mufti of Rome; but then have you not one half of your people belonging to him somewhere outside of London?" Certainly not,' replied Mr. Salt: 'I fear the Franks here 830 deceive your highness in the accounts they give of England.' But,' said the Pacha, are not some of your rayahs of a different religion to yours? are they not treated like slaves? did they not rebel, and did not you chastise them with the sword? and yet the sultan never interfered; they were your rayahs: you used the giaours as they thought fit, and we never asked you why do you trample on these dogs? and now, tell me what right have you to send money and arms to our rayahs, to rebel against their master? and why do you ask the Sultan to set them free?' These were very awkward questions, and Mr. Salt confessed to me, he found it difficult to answer them. But it is a bad case which admits of no defence; so Mr. Salt explained the disinterestedness of our policy, and the toleration of our laws, in a long discourse to the Pacha; which his highness listened to with great gravity and good humour, as if he believed every syllable of it; for Turks are extremely polite in argument, they had rather appear to be convinced, than have the trouble to repeat their dissent. The Pacha appears to be in his sixty-third or sixty-fourth year; a hale, good-looking old man, with nothing but his piercing eyes to redeem his countenance from an expression of vulgarity." GREEKS AND TURKS COMPARED. (From Madden's Travels.) THIS extract clearly shews how easy it is for superficial thinkers to take up hasty opinions; and also proves how true is the description which the unerring finger of God has traced in his word, of the character of man, in all circumstances, when living at a distance from his. Creator: "It has been a long disputed question whether the Greeks or Turks are the best people: but the question should have been which of them is the worst; for I should be inclined to say, from my own experience, that the Greeks as a nation are the least estimable people in the world, with the exception of the Turks, who are still less to be admired. "But as to the outward man, the Turk is, physically speaking, the finest animal, and indeed excels all Europeans in bodily vigour, as well as beauty. As to their moral qualities, I cannot go to the length of Thornton's commendation, or of De Tott's abuse. In my medical relations with them, I had much to admire, and a great deal to condemn. I found them charitable to the poor, attentive to the sick, and kind to their domestics; but I also found them perfidious to their friends, trea |