A certain Mr. Mackay from Ireland called on me, an active agent, it would seem, about the reform of prisons.  He exclaims, justly I have no doubt, about the state of our Lock-up House.  For myself, I have some distrust of the fanaticism—­even of philanthropy.  A good part of it arises in general from mere vanity and love of distinction, gilded over to others and to themselves with some show of benevolent sentiment.  The philanthropy of Howard, mingled with his ill-usage of his son, seems to have risen to a pitch of insanity.  Yet without such extraordinary men, who call attention to the subject by their own peculiarities, prisons would have remained the same dungeons which they were forty or fifty years ago.  I do not see the propriety of making them dandy places of detention.  They should be a place of punishment, and that can hardly be if men are lodged better, and fed better, than when they are at large.  The separation of ranks is an excellent distinction, and is nominally provided for in all modern prisons.  But the size of most of them is inadequate to the great increase of crime, and so the pack is shuffled together again for want of room to keep them separate.  There are several prisons constructed on excellent principles, the economy of which becomes deranged so soon as the death takes place of some keen philanthropist who had the business of a whole committee, which, having lost him, remained like a carcass without a head.  But I have never seen a plan for keeping in order these resorts of guilt and misery, without presupposing a superintendence of a kind which might perhaps be exercised, could we turn out upon the watch a guard of angels.  But, alas! jailors and turnkeys are rather like angels of a different livery, nor do I see how it is possible to render them otherwise.  Superintendence is all you can trust to, and superintendence, save in some rare cases, is hard to come by, where it is to be vigilantly and constantly exercised. Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? As to reformation, I have no great belief in it, when the ordinary class of culprits, who are vicious from ignorance or habit, are the subjects of the experiment.  “A shave from a broken loaf” is thought as little of by the male set of delinquents as by the fair frail.  The state of society now leads so much to great accumulations of humanity, that we cannot wonder if it ferment and reek like a compost dunghill.  Nature intended that population should be diffused over the soil in proportion to its extent.  We have accumulated in huge cities and smothering manufactories the numbers which should be spread over the face of a country; and what wonder that they should be corrupted?  We have turned healthful and pleasant brooks into morasses and pestiferous lakes,—­what wonder the soil should be unhealthy?  A great deal, I think, might be done by executing the punishment of death, without a chance of escape, in all cases to which it should be found properly applicable; of