224 Notes of the Month on [FEB. 



in Wapping, and be dispatched back to their quarters with the velocity 

 of a cannon-ball. Something might be thus saved to the country in the 

 article of wooden-legs ; but still we are a little sceptical as to the advan- 

 tages that are to result from the Greenwich Rail-road Association. 



THE ADVANTAGES OP GOING TO JAIL. Mr. E. G. Wakefield's recent 

 pamphlets, " Swing Unmasked," and " Facts connected with the punish- 

 ment of Death," are just now going the triumphant round of the news- 

 papers. The Times quotes, the Sun praises, the Spectator adopts ; 

 while all three agree in opinion that they contain much shrewd observa- 

 tion, much sound, practical morality, much valuable, and even novel, 

 information. Assuredly these are signs of the times when a gentleman 

 goes to Newgate to complete his education ! Had Mr. Wakefield never 

 honoured that classic region with a three years' residence, instead of 

 being the man he now is, <c a thing of mark and likelihood," he would 

 merely have been one of the multitude, a cypher in society as in literature. 

 But going to jail has been the making of him ! It has not only enlarged 

 the sphere of his observation, but, strange to tell, even improved the 

 quality of his ethics. He enters Newgate a thoughtless, reckless roue ; 

 he comes out of it a sage, a moralist, a philosopher ! As Christian in 

 the Pilgrim's Progress washed off all his earthly stains in the chilly 

 waters of Death, so Mr. Wakefield regenerates his intellectual Adam in 

 the purifying atmosphere of Newgate. In fact, he perfects his educa- 

 tion, and takes his degree there, precisely like a student after a three 

 years' residence at the University. Since therefore this incarceration 

 has redeemed our clever pamphleteer, by expanding his judgment and 

 maturing his powers, who knows whether it may not be made to pro- 

 duce the same blessed effect on others ? At any rate the experiment is 

 worth trying. This is the age of theory, when all systems, all opinions, 

 whether fantastic or otherwise, are sure to meet with encouragement. 

 With due submission, therefore, we propose that all our embryo politi- 

 cians be henceforth sent, one after the other, to jail ; some for two, some 

 for three, some for five years, according to the urgency of the case, and 

 the extent of their acquirements, in order that they may be thereby 

 qualified, like Mr. Wakefield, to enter on the great business of public 

 life, in. a shrewd and practical spirit. 



A PROPOSITION FAIRLY CANVASSED : Is THE WORLD GOOD OR BAD 

 UPON THE WHOLE ? In those instructive volumes recently published by 

 Colburn, entitled " Jefferson's Memoirs," the great American philoso- 

 pher, writing to his friend Lafayette, is made to say " the world is good 

 upon the whole ; were I to live my days over again, I would do so most 

 readily." This is undoubtedly high, but it is far from being decisive or 

 even weighty authority. And why so ? Because from first to last, from 

 the alpha to the omega of his career, Jefferson's life was one long, un- 

 interrupted triumph. The stream of his good fortune knew neither flux 

 nor reflux, but flowed on from youth to age in a broad, calm, and un- 

 wrinkled channel. He never knew disappointment except by name ; 

 nor adversity except as he witnessed its effects on others. At twenty he 

 was a rising man in America ; at twenty-five he was her prodigy ; at 

 thirty he drew up the Declaration, and witnessed the achievement of her 

 Independence ; at forty he was her Secretary of State ; at sixty her 

 President ; and up to the period of his dissolution her most venerated 



