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the atrociousness of putting women to such a task, the poor wretches made resistance, in all manner of ways, to working in the mill. If the mill be so essentially obnoxious to prisoners, that they will, from time to time, risk and incur whippings and other forcible measures, the mill is a nuisance and an oppression. This will be our decision, till we are made to believe that whippings are necessary to make them pick oakum, beat flax, and work at common trades or occupations. We suspect that it is not work at which the prisoners kick, but at a task they feel to be revolting to their minds, and trying to their bodies. These whippings, however, will not do for repetition; there is something too summary and severe in them, something smacking of the Inquisition and torture, something that gives one a sensation of arbitrary power, and mock trials with closed doors. Prison discipline must, we grant, correct prison offences—BUT PRISON OFFENCES SHOULD NEVER BE PROVOKED BY PRISON DISCIPLINE. In taking leave of our subject for the present, we must again express our wonder at the executive, for not putting the Alien Act in force on some late occasions; and again congratulate our friends, that the line of argument we have all along adopted, with respect to the POLICE dealings with gamblers, is the line of argument, which it has been found necessary to pursue in practice, though at the cost of a police conviction, the wisdom of certain stipendiary magistrates, and the character for any thing but carelessness and want of discriminatory foresight on the part of the legislature !

[We keep back a great part of our matter upon gambling and the treadmill; as we wish to see, in the first instance, what will be the success of the appeal from the late sentence of Mr. Halls. With regard, generally, to the tread-mill, as a punishment, we shall leave our pages open to all; as we are fully aware that it is a subject on which conscientious men may hold the widest difference of opinion.]

THE CONTEMPLATIST.

AMONG the persons who have lately assisted the deliberations of our Council, is a gentleman who goes among us by the name of "the Contemplatist." The appellation itself gives a good notion of his character. In all the modes and situations of existence, he has preserved the original features of his mind; and wherever he is placed, he still appears a hermit among crowds, a philosopher among fops, a being wrapped up in meditation and reverie among men of business and men of pleasure. We will not say that he lives altogether in a world of his own; or that, like the witches in Macbeth,

"He looks not like an inhabitant o' th' earth,

And yet is on it :"

although assuredly he does not look upon humanity and its concerns with the common eyes, nor do they move him in the usual manner. Yet there is not a spark of affectation in him, natural or acquired-for is not affectation sometimes natural? He is contemplative, but not absent; silent, but not mysterious. For mercy's sake, let him not be considered as one of the vulgar herd of Byronic characters,—a gentleman who is sad as night

Merely from wantonness :

who is savage, and sullen, and melancholy with all his might, and cultivates a gloomy desperate for the pleasure of it: who has been a fool through life, and ends in being a misanthrope, as he began by being a villain. On the contrary, he reflects long and deeply; but his reflections spring from a heart "overflowing with the milk of human kindness." He regards both the material and moral universe with a keen but fond perception: he is imbued with that truer and finer philosophy, which

Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks,
Sermons in stones, and good in every thing.

Nor must we confound him with the wretched animals, who wish to appear thoughtful without the power of thinking: who hold it a grand thing to stand with their arms folded, and look marvellously sentimental. For such lamentable

coxcombs our Contemplatist has an utter contempt. Yet he somewhat resembles Jaques, in "All's Well that Ends Well;" or even the fool, whom Jaques describes; and who seems, by the way, to have been at least as rational as many who have acquired among their contemporaries the reputation of wise men. We have even likened him in his more moralizing moods to a man who we can conceive to have died once, and then to have obtained permission to walk a little longer about the scenes of life, after having experienced the last and most convincing proof of its frivolities, its follies, and its ephemeral duration. But we must leave him to develop his character by degress. We only mention him at present for the sake of introducing some of his poetical reflections, applicable to the passing season of the year.

POETICAL REFLECTIONS ON CHRISTMAS.

It is the day-the consecrated day-
The day of his nativity, who liv'd

That we might know how best to live and died
That we might never taste eternal death!

It is the day, which brought the incarnate Son
Into this world of sin-this world of woe-
Him, who, as God, with his Almighty hand
Stretch'd forth the boundless universe, and dwelt
In heaven with the Father from the first.
Him, in his human nature spotless, pure,
And kind, beyond what fancy e'er conceiv'd;
Or, in his brightest visions, Plato dreamt
As human, had he never wrought the works,
The wond'rous works of his celestial love :
A man indeed divine!-It is the day
Which brings our holy carnival ;—our time
Of gaiety fresh springing from the heart,
Of mirth, with which a solemn feeling blends
To sober, but not mar it! Now the hours
Leap forth with sacred triumph on their wings;
And good old smiling hospitality

Laughs o'er the board, passing the wassail-bow!
Of kindness round; and bids th' half-sated guest
Eat, drink, rejoice, or drown his cares in song.

And yet these Christmas revels seem no more
What they have been :—since here, methinks, the
Degenerate, with refinement sicklied o'er,

age,

Has dull'd the spirit of such scenes; and robb'd
Our father's merriment of half its mirth :
Or I the self-same feelings feel no more

To cheer the worn-out soul.-But there-'tis gone-
I cast each melancholy thought away,

And yield me to the genius of the hour.
Come, let us laugh, and heap fresh logs of wood
Upon that crackling pyramid of fire;

And let the liberal host, delighted, broach
The mellow wine coeval with himself.

Yes! Christmas still has pleasures all its own,
Its fond associations, home delights,
Denied to other seasons. Ev'n the cold

Which bars us from the field-sport, and the chase,
And drives to man's abode the shiv'ring birds,
And famishing wolves, that howl around his door,
With lean gaunt forms and hunger-sharpen'd eye-—
That cold brings to one focus human joys,
Concentred round the blissful spot-our hearth-
With essence tasted more as less diffused :-
As in some generous liquor, while the weak,
Poor, watery parts are all congeal'd around,
Still in the midst the quick warm spirit flows,
Condens'd and driven inward by the frost.

Now, through the Christian world, from the soft sons Of Italy, unto the fur-clad Russ,

Or sunless, subterranean Laplander,

Enjoyment reigns :-the merry laugh goes round,

The song, the tale, the riddle, and the jest.
There, while the jovial music sounds, behold
The joyous smile, the light unwearied foot,
And glistening eye, and gay expanding heart,
How heedless of to-morrow!-Now imbibes
Fair youth a carelessness beyond its own,
And age grows young again, with cheer of mind
Shakes off the feebleness of frame, and joins
The long unus'd, but unforgotten dance.
Then, even they, to whom the world has seem'd
A thing to gaze on, not to live in :—they,
Spite of themselves, and that still haunting woe,
Which has for years been their familiar, find
These Christmas hours a mirth-inspiring time
For them as for the rest. They look around
And grow like what they look on; while the wand
Of magic memory calls back former joys;

And the bright spirit of departed hopes,

As re-embodied, starts again to life,

And with expanding warmth comes o'er the soul,

Like a spring-day in winter! Uncongeal'd,
Unwrapt in dull precision's frozen robe,
Society disclaims her cold restraint,
And etiquette relaxes to a smile;

And forms are half forgotten.-Ah, I see-
I see them all, as lov'd in other years→→
The manly sire-the mother, whose full joy
Her heart no more contains, but lets it gush
In drops of sacred rapture from her eyes,
Smiling-yet tearful too!—the daughter, bright
In maiden beauty, like some heavenly thing,
Some dream of fondest fancy realized,—
With sisters hanging round her, soon to be
Lovely as she is now-the youth, robust,
Who all the morn pursues the chase; or when
The frost has bound the earth, and deep-laid snow
Spreads its white wintery mantle o'er the woods,
Skims o'er the solid ice, and gaily finds

In exercise an antidote to cold :

The school-boy, now at home-and in that word
Is every bliss for him :-the ruddy child,
Who laughs to think of pantomime or play,
The unfamiliar joy, the sight unseen,

The delicacy never tasted yet,

The Christmas present, and the Christmas joy :

The infant smiling in the nurse's arms,

As knowing this should be a festival,

A time for only smiles!

Yet one, alas!

Is absent from that group, loving and lov'd,-
Those cheerful faces round the Christmas fire-
He should have laugh'd amidst them now, and lent
A double zest to merriment :-but death!-
Alas, alas, man must not think of death!-
Now fresh and young, and full of lusty life :-
Now dead-decaying in the common grave !-
Let the thought vanish-but it still returns ;-
For in this closing year, as all the past,
Has man been mortal-death has done his work
And leaves us, at its close, to pour the tears
Of sad remembrance o'er the graves of them,
Who, at its gay commencement, shed o'er us
The beaming sunshine of their happy smile.
But ill such visions suit the lovely sight,
Where, in one spot, are met parental care,
With all of filial or fraternal love

The heart can feel-far more than words can paint.
Once more, then, let us turn to homely joys,

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