"Vicious Examples.-The general prevalence and spread of wickedness in prisons and abroad by discharged prisoners, will now be as easily accounted for as the propagation of disease.

It

is often said, "A prison pays no debts;' I am sure it may be added, that a prison mends no morals. Sir John Fielding observes, that a criminal discharged, generally by the next sessions after the execution of his comrades, becomes the head of a gang of his own raising.' And petty offenders who are committed to bridewell for a year or two, and spend that time, not in hard labour, but in idleness and wicked company, or are sent for that time to county jails, generally grow desperate, and come out fitted for the perpetration of any villany. Half the robberies in and about London are planned in the prisons, and by that dreadful assemblage of criminals, and the number of idle people who visit them. Multitudes of young creatures, committed for some trifling offence, are totally ruined there. I make no scruple to affirm, that if it were the wish and aim of magistrates to effect the destruction, present and future, of young delinquents, they could not devise a more effectual method than to confine them so long in our prisons, those seats and seminaries of idleness and every vice.

"Those gentlemen who, when they are told of the misery which our prisoners suffer, content themselves with saying, 'Let them take care to keep out,' prefaced perhaps with an angry prayer, seem not duly sensible of the favour of Providence which disJenkes," says one anonymous writer, "being imprisoned for treasonable words spoken against the queen, and being a popish recusant, had notwithstanding, during the time of his restraint, liberty sometimes to walk abroad with a keeper; and one day he came to an apothecary and showed him a recipe which he desired him to make up; but the apothecary, upon the view of it, told him that it was a strong and dangerous recipe, and required some time to prepare it, but also asked him to what use he would apply it. He answered, to kill the rats that, since his imprisonment, spoiled his books; so, being satisfied, he promised to make it ready. After a certain time he cometh to know if it were ready; but the apothecary said the ingredients were so hard to procure, that he had not done it, and so gave him the recipe again, of which he had taken a copy, which mine author had there precisely written down, but did seem so horribly poisonous, that I cut it forth, lest it might fall into the hands of wicked persons. But after, it seems, he had got it prepared, and against the day of his trial had made a week or wick of it (for so is the word—that is, so fitted, that, like a candle, it might be fired), which, as soon as ever he was condemned, he lighted, having provided himself a tinder-box and steel to strike fire. And whosoever should know the ingredients of that wick or candle, and the manner of the composition, will easily be persuaded of the virulency and venomous effects of it." This explanation seems to have been adapted to the public appetite for the wonderful; at all events, being anonymous, it is to be regarded as nothing more than a curiosity. The generally received explanation was, that the disease arose from infection brought into court by the prisoners; and the opinion, sanctioned by Lord Bacon, that this infection was a fever bred by the filth of the jail, was but too surely confirmed by subsequent instances of a precisely similar nature.

tinguishes them from the sufferers. They do not remember that we are required to imitate our gracious Heavenly Parent, who is kind to the unthankful and to the evil; they also forget the vicissitudes of human affairs; the unexpected changes to which all men are liable; and that those whose circumstances are affluent, may in time be reduced to indigence, and become debtors and prisoners. And as to criminality, it is possible that a man who has often shuddered at hearing the account of a murder, may, on a sudden temptation, commit that very crime. Let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall, and commiserate those that are fallen."

Such, in an abridged form, is the introductory section of Mr Howard's work, entitled "A General View of Distress in Prisons;" but in order fully to appreciate the enormous extent of his labours, it would be necessary to follow him into the remainder of the work, in which he describes and criticises, one by one, the various prisons, both foreign and British, which he had visited during the preceding four years. It is only in this way that one can gain an adequate conception of the misery and wretchedness of the prison system of Great Britain in the latter part of the eighteenth century.

DOMESTIC MISFORTUNES-NEW SCHEME OF PHILANTHROPY -SURVEY OF FOREIGN HOSPITALS.

Mr Howard did not consider that his labours were over when he had published his work on prisons, and laid before the world grievances which had long flourished in society undetected and unknown. In the end of the first edition of his work, he had made a promise that, "if the legislature should seriously engage in the reformation of our prisons, he would take a third journey through the Prussian and Austrian dominions, and the free cities of Germany. This,” he says, "I accomplished in 1778, and likewise extended my tour through Italy, and revisited some of the countries I had before seen in pursuit of my object." His observations during this tour he published in a second edition of his work in 1780. Wishing, before the publication of a third edition, to acquire some further knowledge on the subject, he again visited Holland, and some cities in Germany. "I visited also," he says, "the capitals of Denmark, Sweden, Russia, and Poland; and, in 1783, some cities in Portugal and Spain, and returned through France, Flanders, and Holland." The substance of all these travels he threw into a third and final edition of his work on prisons.

Thus, during ten years, had Howard laboured incessantly at a single object, allowing no other to interfere with it; travelling almost without intermission from place to place, and undergoing innumerable risks. From a table drawn up by one of his biographers, it appears that, between 1773 and 1783, he had travelled on his missions of philanthropy, at home and abroad, upwards of

forty thousand miles. Forty thousand miles travelled in ten years!-not from mountain to mountain, or from one object of natural beauty to another, but from jail to jail, and bridewell to bridewell-no wonder that Howard, on the retrospect of such a labour fairly accomplished, wrote in his diary, "I bless God who inclined my mind to such a scheme."

During his journeys in Great Britain and Ireland, Mr Howard was usually accompanied by a single servant. He travelled generally on horseback, at the rate of forty miles a-day.

"He was

never," says his biographer, Dr Aikin, "at a loss for an inn. When in Ireland, or the Highlands of Scotland, he used to stop at one of the poor cabins that stuck up a rag by way of sign, and get a little milk. When he came to the town he was to sleep at, he bespoke a supper, with wine and beer, like another traveller; but made his man attend him, and take it away while he was preparing his bread and milk. He always paid the waiters, postilions, &c. liberally, because he would have no discontent or dispute, nor suffer his spirits to be agitated for such a matter; saying that, in a journey which might cost three or four hundred pounds, fifteen or twenty pounds in addition were not worth thinking about."

In the spring of 1784 Mr Howard, now about fifty-seven years of age, retired to his estate of Cardington, intending to spend the remainder of his life in peace and quiet, assisting in his private capacity in furthering those schemes of prison improvement which his disclosures had set on foot. He resumed the mode of life which he had led before commencing his prison inquiries; with this difference, that, being now a distinguished public character, his visitors were more frequent and more numerous than formerly. There was one sad circumstance, however, which embittered the peace of this benevolent man. His only son, who had received his early education at several academies in England, and had been sent in his eighteenth year to the univer sity of Edinburgh, and placed under the care of the venerable and well-known Dr Blacklock, had unhappily contracted habits of extravagance and dissipation; which, to any parent, and especially to one of Howard's principles, must have caused poignant grief. Already the unfortunate young man had shown symptoms of that malady, brought on by his own imprudent and vicious conduct, which ultimately settled into complete insanity. Of the full extent of this domestic misfortune Mr Howard was not yet

aware.

After nearly two years of repose, interrupted only by the circumstance to which we have alluded, Mr Howard resolved to quit home on a new mission of philanthropy, fraught with greater danger than the one he had accomplished so successfully. During his inquiries into the state of prisons, his attention had been often directed to the spread of infectious diseases, and the inadequacy of the means provided for checking the progress of fever,

pestilence, &c. whether originating in jails or elsewhere. The subject thus suggested to him occupied much of his thoughts during his leisure at Cardington; and he at length determined to devote the remainder of his life to an inspection of the principal hospitals and lazarettos of Europe, with a view to ascertain their defects, and the possibility of effecting such improvements in them as would in future preserve the populations of Europe from the ravages of that dreadful visitation-the plague.

Towards the end of November 1785 Mr Howard left England on his new expedition of philanthropy. He proceeded first to France, with a view to inspect the lazaretto at Marseilles; but, owing to the jealousy of the French government, it was with the utmost difficulty he could accomplish his object; indeed he narrowly escaped apprehension and committal to the Bastile. After visiting the hospitals of Genoa, Leghorn, Pisa, and Florence, he next proceeded to Rome. Here he was privately introduced to Pope Pius VI., himself a benevolent man. On this occasion the ceremony of kissing the pope's toe was dispensed with; and at parting, his holiness laid his hand on his visitor's head, saying kindly, "I know you Englishmen do not mind these ceremonies, but the blessing of an old man can do you no harm." From Rome our traveller went to Naples, and thence to Malta, pursuing always, as his single object, a knowledge of the state of the hospitals on his route. Writing from Malta to a friend in England, he says, "I have paid two visits to the Grand Master. Every place is flung open to me. I am bound for Zante, Smyrna, and Constantinople. One effect I find during my visits to the lazaretto; namely, a heavy headache—a pain across my forehead; but it has always quite left me in an hour after I have come from these places. As I am quite alone, I have need to summon all my courage and resolution."

After remaining about three weeks at Malta, Mr Howard set out for Zante. "From thence," he says, "in a foreign ship I got a passage to Smyrna. Here I boldly visited the hospitals and prisons; but as some accidents happened, a few dying of the plague, several shrunk at me. I came thence to Constantinople, where I now am, about a fortnight ago. As I was in a miserable Turk's boat, I was lucky in a passage of six days and a half. I am sorry to say some die of the plague about us. One is just carried before my window; yet I visit where none of my conductors will accompany me. In some hospitals, as in the lazarettos, and yesterday among the sick slaves, I have a constant headache; but in about an hour after it always leaves me. I lodge at a physician's house, and I keep some of my visits a secret." From Constantinople he returned to Smyrna, where the plague was also raging; his object being to obtain a passage from that port to Venice, in order that he might undergo the full rigours of the quarantine system, and be able to report, from personal observation, respecting the economy of a lazaretto. On the

voyage from Smyrna to Venice, the ship in which he sailed was attacked by a Tunis privateer, and all on board ran great risks. At length, after a desperate fight, a cannon loaded with spikes, nails, and old iron, and pointed by Mr Howard himself, was discharged with such effect upon the corsair vessel, that it was obliged to sheer off. From Venice he writes thus to his confidential servant Thomasson, at Cardington; the letter being dated Venice Lazaretto, October 12, 1786:-"I am now in an infectious lazaretto, yet my steady spirits never forsook me till yesterday, on the receipt of my letters. Accumulated misfortunes almost sink me. I am sorry, very sorry, on your account. I will hasten home; no time will I lose by night or day. But forty days I have still to be confined here, as our ship had a foul bill of health, the plague being in the place from whence we sailed. Then that very hasty and disagreeable measure that is taken in London wounds me sadly indeed. Never have I returned to my country with such a heavy heart as I now do." The two circumstances which he alludes to in this extract as distressing him so much, and making him so anxious to leave Venice and return home, were the misconduct of his son, of which he had received further accounts, and a proposal which had just been made in London, and of which intelligence had been conveyed to him, to erect a monument to commemorate the nation's sense of his former philanthropic labours.

The term of his quarantine at Venice being finished, he proceeded to Trieste, and thence to Vienna. How the thoughts of his sad domestic affliction mingled and struggled with his daily exertions in connexion with the great object of his tour, we may learn from the following touching postscript to a letter to Mr Smith of Bedford, written from Vienna, and dated 17th December 1786:-"Excuse writing, &c. as wrote early by a poor lamp. What I suffered, I am persuaded I should have disregarded in the lazaretto, as I gained useful information. Venice is the mother of all lazarettos; but oh, my son, my son!" At Vienna Mr Howard had an interview with the Austrian emperor, who entered into conversation with him on the subject of his tour, discussed with him the state of the prisons and hospitals in his Austrian dominions, and expressed his intention to adopt some of his suggestions for their improvement. The attention shown by the emperor to his distinguished visitor procured him the notice of many of the courtiers; and a characteristic anecdote is told of his interview with the governor of Upper Austria and his lady. The Austrian noble asked Howard, in a somewhat haughty manner, what he thought of the prisons in his government. "The worst in all Germany," said Howard; "particularly as regards the female prisoners; and I recommend your countess to visit them personally, as the best means of rectifying the abuses in their management." "I!" said the astonished countess "I go into prisons!" and she rapidly descended the