860 
‘his was exactly the case here. On 
what is now near to the brook of 
Ruan, and what was formerly the 
very margin of the tide-way, stand 
some lofty remains, which always 
attract the attention of a surveyor ; 
and, in which, is what tradition calls 
the dungel, and reports to have been 
a prison. And dungel, the popular 
appellation among the Cornish of 
Ruan, for the round tower itself, is 
now confined to its dungeon or pri- 
son. That was, ‘* at least, fifty 
feet in height, within the present 
century. ‘This is placed, by tradi- 
tion, where the remains are still 
about forty feet high. A thick rem- 
nant of the castle shoots up into a 
kind of lofty gable end. In this is 
a couple of stone chimnies. One of 
them is still used in a house, that has 
latterly obtained the name of the Mu- 
sic Room, from a musical society 
convened in it at times by Mr. 
Grant. But close to this chimney 
on the south, is a kind of funnel in 
the wall, about two feet wide, and 
five feet deep, that comes down from 
the roof, is closed up in the cham- 
ber above, is all open to the east in 
the ground-room, and descended 
lately by a hole in the floor, to an 
unknown depth in the earth. Forty 
years ago, the boys called this fun- 
nel the dungel, threw stones down, 
the uncovered hole in the floor, lis- 
tened with admiration to their rattle, 
as they descended, and then ran 
away with terror. All the dust of 
the house used, more recently, to be 
swept into it. It has thus become 
so far filled up im the time, that a 
young girl used, a few years ago, to 
let herself down into it, in order to 
recover any thing that had fallen 
down it. It was then about seven 
feet deep; and it is now boarded 
over. Under this room is a kind of 
; 4 
‘ 
ANNUAL REGISTER, 1809, 
cellar, used as a warehouse now, 
but reported, by tradition, to have 
been a prison formerly. It was the 
real dungel or dungeon of the cas. 
tle; being then accessible only 
from above. And it must have been 
a dark ard dismal dungeon, having 
no light into it, even at present, 
except a little that comes in by a | 
small lattice in the new part of the 
wall over the door : having the walls 
thick and damp around it, and even 
the rock for a yard high on the 
north side ; being accessible only by 
a rope or ladder, through a trap- 
door in the floor above; and being 
reached every tide with the waves of 
the sca. Such a piéture have we 
here of the severity used to crimi- 
nals formerly! The milkiness of 
compassion, that sensitive plant 
which is so much cultivated in our 
English soil at present, shrinks up 
into itself with a tremulous vivacity 
of feeling, at the conception of such 
treatment, even for the vilest crimi- 
nals. But the temperament of the 
British body was infinitely better 
calculated formerly for bearing the 
damp of such a dungeon than it is 
now. Our very prisons are now 
dryer than the castles of our barons 
were. And, as to the solitude and 
darkness of a prison, these, surely, 
are very properly adapted to the 
purposes of corrective confinement ; 
to the sequestration of the guilty 
mind from objeéts that divert its at- 
tention from its guilt; to enforcing 
upon it the consideration of its own 
criminality ; and to the produétion 
of an useful penitence in it. Imme- 
diately over this subterraneous kind 
of prison must the jatlor have lived. 
The chimney of the room over the 
dungeon was the chimney of his 
house. But what was the funnel 
by it? It was one of the priries . 
the 
