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and the Murderer; and medical assistance, which is provided 'for the latter, is withheld from the former: besides which, they * suffer a variety of obstructions and hardships, to impede their 'discharge from custody, even after the Law has spent its force, or pitying creditors have forgiven the debts which had detained 'them.'

But human suffering is a finite evil. A few wretched years must at length terminate the merciless dominion of man over his fellow, and if no day of jubilee ever dawns on the unhappy tenant of the dungeon, there is the release of death. That which gives to Evil its true character of demon power and grandeur, is its relation to the moral part of the human being: it is as this is enslaved, polluted, and debased, that its triumphs claim to be regarded as infinite. Mr. Howard made no scruple to affirm, and Mr. Buxton has done well to record the sentence on his title-page, that if it were the aim and wish of magistrates to effect the destruction, present and future, of young delinquents, they could not desire a more effectual method than to confine them in OUR PRISONS.' The best commentary on this affirmation, is supplied by the following affecting

statement.

I could, if delicacy would allow it, mention the name of a person who practised in the law, and who was connected by marriage with some very respectable families. He, for a fraud, was committed to Clerkenwell prison, and sent from thence to Newgate, in a coach, handcuffed to a noted housebreaker, who was afterwards cast for death. The first night, and the subsequent fortnight, he slept in the same bed with a highwayman on one side, and a man charged with wurder on the other. During that period, and long after, spirits were freely introduced. At first he abstained from them, but he soon found that either he must adopt the manners of his companions, or his life would be in danger. They already viewed him with some suspicion, as one of whom they knew nothing. He was in consequence put out of the protection of their internal law. Their code is a subject of some curiosity. When any prisoner commits an offence against the community, or against an individual, he is tried. Some one, generally the oldest and most dextrous thief, is appointed judge, a towel tied in knots is hung on each side of his head, in imitation of a wig. He takes his seat, if he can find one, with all form and decorum; and to call him any thing but " my lord,” is a high misdemeanour. A Jury is then appointed, and regularly sworn, and the culprit is brought up. Unhappily justice is not administered with quite the same integrity within the prison as without it. The most trifling bribe to the judge will secure an acquittal, but the neglect of this formality is a sure prelude to condemnation. The punishments are various; standing in the pillory is the heaviest. The criminal's head is placed between the legs of a chair, and his arms stretched out are attached to it, he then carries about this machine; but any punishment, however heinous the offence, might be commuted into a

fine, to be spent in gin, for the use of the Judge and Jury. This mode of trial was the source of continual persecution to Mr. hardly a day passed without an accusation against him for moving something which ought not to be touched, or leaving a door open, or coughing maliciously, to the disturbance of his companions. The evidence was always clear, to the satisfaction of the Jury; and the Judge was incessant in his efforts to reform him, by inflicting the highest punishments. In short, self-preservation rendered it necessary for him to adopt the manners of his associates; by insensible degrees he began to lose his repugnance to their society; caught their flash terms, and sung their songs, was admitted to their revels, and acquired, in place of habits of perfect sobriety, a taste for spirits; and a taste so strong and so rooted, that even now he finds it difficult to resist the cravings of his diseased thirst for stimulants. ¿ 'I conceive I cannot better illustrate the situation of Mr. than by a letter I received from his wife. Considerable suspicion must attach to the declaration of every person, however reputable his present conduct may be, who has been himself convicted of crime: I have, therefore, thought it right to suppress every part of his information which is not confirmed by other and creditable testimony. The artless statement of his wife, who has throughout conducted herself with unimpeachable propriety, and who laboured with her own hands to support her husband when in confinement, will hardly be rejected.

"Sir,-I cannot attempt to state to you the sufferings I have undergone, from the first period of my husband's persecution, to his final release. Passing over my having to attend him for near a month at the Clerkenwell prison, previous to his removal to Newgate for trial; where, on my first visit to him, I found he had been so removed, handcuffed to a notorious offender; now become an inmate in the same ward with several others of the most dreadful sort, whose language and manners, whose female associates of the most abandoned description, and the scenes consequent with such lost wretches, prevented me from going inside but seldom, and I used to communicate with him through the bars from the passage; but on my going one morning, I found he was ill, and unable to come down. Anxious to see him, I went to the ward, and there he lay, pale as death, very ill, and in a dreadful dirty state, the wretches making game of him, and enjoying my distress; and I learned he had been up with the others the whole night. Though they could not force him to gamble, he was compelled to drink; and I was afterwards obliged to let him have eight shillings to pay his share, otherwise he would have been stripped of his clothes. I was the more shocked, as knowing Mr. 's firm mind and sober habits, up to this moment. I dreaded the consequences of such a relaxation and of such examples. I saw his health declining; I saw the destructive effects upon him of such association; I found he was compelled to do as they did, and to think as they thought; for on his once attempting to remon strate with them, his life was threatened, and he was afraid when he went to bed to go to sleep. Having this relation from him, and see ing him daily getting worse; knowing his former strict principles and

steady habits, I felt every thing a wife could feel for a virtuous man, and an affectionate husband, forced into such society; and his irre trievable ruin, even in this respect, presented itself to my view." pp. 48-51.

If these extracts shall have the effect of rousing the attention of our readers to this important subject, they will answer their purpose. Let them remember upon whom will rest the guilt of all this misery and oppression, if they pass by on the other side. The Legislature who are alone competent to carry into effect any radical improvement, will yield to public opinion unequivocally expressed, and to that alone. The subject must be forced upon its consideration. Interests and prejudices are to be surmounted, which will die hard. Much may, however, in the mean time, be effected by active individuals in their respective counties and districts, to enforce the existing laws, and to mitigate the legalized abuses. The Second Part of Mr. Buxton's work, to which we earnestly recommend the attention of all our readers, will inform them what has been done, and is still doing, by individual exertion, to remedy the evils of the present system. In Newgate itself, which contains the very refuse of the capital, the result of only a year's experiment, as conducted by the Ladies' Committee, has been such as to astonish, as well as to impart the highest satisfaction to, the Grand Juries and superintending magistrates. 'I am well persuaded,' says Mr. Buxton, that 'the evil exists only because it is unknown; that it arises not 'from insensibility on the part of the nation, but from ignorance.' This apology for its continuance must be esteemed no longer valid. The feelings of parents, the interests of masters, the indignation of the patriot, the principles of the Christian, all loudly forbid its continuance. It is not a question of mere humanity, as to whether crime shall receive a greater or less degree of punishment, though a criminal does not necessarily forfeit all his claims upon society. It is a question, in many cases, of absolute right, whether illegal severities shall be inflicted on the unconvicted; whether those who are presumed innocent, shall be sentenced to punishment before trial; whether punishment shall be wantonly and arbitrarily increased, beyond the award of the law, and irrespectively of the aggravation of the crime; whether starvation, cold, suffocation, and disease, corruption of morals and contamination of mind,' shall be esteemed lawful punishments in the hands of the civil magistrate, or of the gaoler; whether the rights of society shall be violated by sending forth the discharged criminal in every respect necessarily a worse man in consequence of the application of the remedy for crime; whether, as in the case of debtors, a class of men weighed down it may be by unavoidable misfortune, shall be subjected to the most dreadful injustice, and debarred the mercy extended to the most

depraved offender; whether, in fine, the moral and religious in→ terests of the imprisoned debtor or criminal, shall be totally abandoned, his reformation altogether precluded, and the laws designed for the protection of society, converted into a system of blind vengeance, and a means of spreading moral contagion. In whatever form we put it, the question as to the continued existence of the present system, must strike at once conviction upon the conscience, as admitting but of one reply. It is cruel, it is unjust, it is impolitic, it is pernicious. Let this be said and felt by the nation at large, and the time will come when the details of Mr. Nield's volume, and the painful recitals furnished by Mr.. Buxton, may be consigned to history, together with the torture of the press-yard, and the horrors of the slave trade.

Mr. Buxton does not require our feeble thanks for the service he has rendered to society. Exertions like his are attended by an over-payment' of present satisfaction.

6

Art. IV. 1. History of a Six Weeks' Tour through a part of France, Switzerland, Germany, and Holland: with letters descriptive of a Sail round the Lake of Geneva, and of the Glaciers of Chamouni, 12mo. pp. 183. Price 5s. London, 1817.

2. A Walk through Switzerland, in September 1816. 12mo. pp. 242, Price 8s. 1818.

CONSIDERING the prodigious number of ladies and gen

tlemen who have visited the continent in search of novelty and the picturesque, and considering, moreover, the extreme facility with which "journals," ""letters," and "tours," are fabricated, as well as the very natural desire which travellers in general feel, to shew the world how much they have seen, and how well they can describe the various wonders which they have encountered, we think that we have, on the whole, escaped tolerably well. We suspect, indeed, that the heavy sale of some of these laudable essays, has made a salutary impression, and that a wholesome dread of periodical criticism, has contributed to abate the excessive eagerness of the appetite for fame. We shall proceed briefly to investigate the merits of the two trim pocket volumes before us.

The first is a rather spirited sketch, and contains some passages of tolerably good description, mingled with a few attempts at sublimity, not quite so successful. To us, however, the value of the book is considerably lessened by a strong suspicion that the dramatis personæ are fictitious, and that the little adventures introduced for the purpose of giving life and interest to the narration, are mere inventions of the Author. We may be mistaken in this, and we can scarcely tell how the notion found its way into our minds, but we certainly began very early to suspect, and our misgivings were turned into something like

f

certainty, by an awkward attempt towards the close to introduce, though without naming him, Lord Byron as a companion in an eight days sail round the lake of Geneva; and by the insertion, at the end of the volume, of a poem which has very much the air of being intended to pass for his Lordship's composition. The narrative professes to be written by a lady who, in company with her husband and sister, travelled, partly on foot, through France to Switzerland, and down the Rhine to Holland. At the very outset, a storm awakens the sympathy of the reader, and the attention is continually kept alive by a number. of convenient little episodes and accidents which might have happened, and we certainly cannot affirm that they did not, though the toute ensemble irresistibly reminds us of the notorious production of "Lieut. Col. Pinkney, of the New York Rangers." If our suspicions are well founded, this mixture of fiction is the more to be regretted, because perfectly unnecessary, since the journey appears to have been really made, or at least dextrously made up from authentic materials.

The road to Paris is as well known to English readers, as that to Dover, and the Writer judiciously passes over it without description. From the capital, the party determined to 'walk through France,' accompanied by an ass, who was condemned to carry not only the portmanteau, but the females alternately; this beast, however, proved unequal to his task, and was afterwards exchanged for a mule. Soon afterwards, the husband sprained his ancle, and this event reminds us of the celebrated sprain which prevented Brydone from ascending Mount Etna, and which he describes with much more pathos than truth, since it is, we believe, tolerably well ascertained that so far from twisting his tendons in this journey, he never even made the attempt of which he relates the failure. In one part of the route, our travellers were much annoyed by a circumstance which has, we imagine, procured for that part of France through which they were journeying, the odious epithet of lousy Champagne.

Nothing could be more barren and wretched than the track through which we now passed; the ground was chalky and uncovered even by grass, and where there had been any attempts made towards cultivation, the straggling ears of corn discovered more plainly the barren nature of the soil. Thousands of insects, which were of the same white colour as the road, infested our path.'

At Troyes they engaged a voiturier, who is said to have been civil and attentive, while he remained in the level country, but to have been scared out of his senses,' by the sight of mountain roads; to have teazed them in various modes of annoyance, and finally to have deserted them. In Switzerland their situation was, in all respects, changed for the better;,