1826.) t 369 | 
THE CONDEMNED CELL. 
THERE are tragedies in real life which, but for their every-day 
occurrence, would penetrate men’s souls deeper than all the fabled 
woes that poets ever yet imagined. I do not allude to the consuming or 
broken hearts which one meets at every turn, and which are either 
masked by their owner’s pride or pass unheeded by the selfish short- 
sightedness of the million, but of those public and notorious spectacles 
in which—as on a stage—the miseries of mankind are exhibited—even 
paraded, without exciting from the beholders more than a passing 
_ remark—sometimes without being thought of at all. 
The condition of criminals sentenced to die is of all others the most 
heart-sickening. Every feeling of humanity revolts at the degradation 
to which these human beings are exposed—and, putting aside the 
enormity of their crimes, and the justice of their punishment (upon 
which latter topic much might be said), it is impossible to contemplate 
men in this condition without sensations of the deepest pain and 
humiliation. Few persons visit these abodes of wretchedness: and it is 
perhaps well that they do not. Little good can result from the spec- 
tacle—it is indecent to gaze upon sorrows which cannot be alleviated— 
and as for the benefit of example—always strangely overrated—what 
can be the force of example from persons whom imprisonment, and suf- 
fering, and conscious helplessness, have reduced to a condition little 
above that of the inhabitants of Bedlam, in point of intellectual power ? 
Years have passed since I saw the condemned cells of Newgate ; but 
many more must elapse before the impression which that sight made 
upon me can be removed, or even weakened. It was on a gloomy 
-November day—the streets were filled with that damp murky vapour 
which is the reproach of our climate—and every thing looked as sad 
and dull as the task I had undertaken. The approach to Newgate-—the 
appearance of the building, and the entrance to the prison—form a 
succession of horrors, the gradual increase of which prepare the mind 
for those which are to ensue, and are a fit prologue to the tragedy 
behind. The massy fastenings to the doors, the chains, of forms and 
size as various as the crimes which fill the heart of man, and hanging 
upon the walls as if in mockery of the ornaments which are to be found 
in ordinary dwellings; the thick stone walls, through which the passages 
seem rather to be cut than built, cast a chill upon the blood, and the 
respiration is checked by the weight which falls upon the animal spirits. 
This oppression is heightened by the scarcely human appearance of the 
gaolers, who swarm about the entrance of the prison. Originally pos- 
sessing the same feelings as other men, their features expressed those 
feelings; but long commerce with the most abandoned of their kind, the 
necessity for exercising an incessant vigilance, and, more than all, the 
knowledge of crime with which their minds have become familiarized, 
have had a blighting effect on their whole being. Like those plants 
which blossom and flourish under the light of the sun and the airs from 
heaven, but which in the noisome damps of a dungeon lose their fresh- 
ness, change their odour for rankness, and their beauty for deformity, 
these men seem to have been lowered from their first nature, and to have 
undergone a similar degradation. But frightful and painful as was the 
approach to this scene of horrors, every further step became infinitely 
more so. ’ ‘S 
M.M. New Series.—Vou.11. No.10. 3B 
