this specimen of heedlessness about the security of the prisoners, Howard next takes us to the Wood-street compter, where all are kept secure enough; there we are shown a room about 35 feet by 18, with twenty-three beds ranged round the walls, on three tiers of shelves. At one of his visits, he informs us there were in this room thirty-nine debtors, seven of them with their wives and children. The room was swarming with vermin. There was a chapel in the court, and under it a taproom. Within the unwholesome precincts of this place, eleven prisoners died in 1773.

We pass on next to Bridewell, where there was no court, and fresh air could be obtained only by means of a hand-ventilator, with a tube to each room of the women's ward. It enjoyed a privilege peculiar to itself, that of having an allowance of rye straw once a month. "No other prison in London," says Howard, "has any straw or bedding." In the new prison, Clerkenwell, our reformer notices some commendable arrangements, but condemned certain cabins or cupboards, five in number, only 10 feet by 5 in measurement, each with a barrack-bed for two prisoners: miserably close and unwholesome cells, having no air but from grates over the doors into the gallery, On visiting the Clerkenwell Bridewell in 1777, he found thirty convicts, committed for a term of years. Some of these, and others besides, were sick, and complained of their feet, which were actually turned black. In 1783 five were ill, one was dying with little or no covering on, and in another room one was laid out dead. In the women's sick ward, twelve were lying in their clothes on the barrack-bedstead and on the floor. without any bedding whatever. In this strange tour about London, which, in proportion as the scenes described shock our sensibilities, must have been to our philanthropist a series of tortures, we arrive next at Whitechapel prison, which presents nothing noteworthy, except the fact of the debtors hanging out a begging-box from a little closet in the front of the house, and attending to it each in

turn. It brought in only a few pence daily, of which pittance none partook but those who on entrance paid the keeper half a crown, and treated the prisoners with half a gallon of beer. We hasten by the Tower Hamlets' gaol, in Wellclose-square, and St. Catherine's gaol, which Howard, though he had visited them repeatedly, only briefly notices; nor can we tarry at the Savoy, with its military guard-rooms, where the philanthropist had seen many sick of the gaol distemper, but where he afterwards found a decided improvement in health, owing to better sanitary regulations. We must, however, relate a striking incident which will ever associate with the history of the Savoy, the remembrance of Howard's amazing personal courage and influence over prisoners. During an alarming riot there, the men confined had killed two of their keepers, and no person dared to approach them, until the intrepid philanthropist undertook to do so. Gaolers and friends endeavoured to dissuade him; but in he went to two horrid ruffians, whose savage spirits he so completely subdued by his persuasions, that they allowed themselves to be quietly conducted back to their cells.

At Tothill Fields' Bridewell, he informs us, the prisoners washed their hands and faces every morning, before they came for their allowance-a practice that must have been very grateful to him, for he ever enforced the strictest cleanliness on those over whom he had any control; and we remember hearing from an old man, who lived at Cardington, how he would notice and reward the children whose hands were clean; and that he once said to a cottager who was not over-fond of self-ablution, "John Basset, go home and wash your hands, or no dinner." Howard describes Westminster Gatehouse as empty, but the King's Bench, Southwark, as full to overflowing. It was so crowded in the summer of 1776, that a prisoner paid five shillings a-week for half a bed, and many lay in the chapel. The debtors, with their families, two-thirds of whom were within the prison walls, amounted to a population of 1004.

H

But, perhaps, of all the London prisons, the Marshalsea was the worst, where debtors and pirates were huddled together in dark narrow rooms, four men in each, sleeping in two beds. The tap room was let to a prisoner, and there the inmates of the place, at times, slept on the floor; and to show the habits of drinking which prevailed, it is sufficient to repeat a statement by Howard, that one Sunday 600 pots of beer were brought in from a neighbouring public-house, because the prisoners did not like the beverage supplied by the tapster within the walls. The spot where we close this melancholy ramble, amidst the scenes of prison life threequarters of a century since, is the Borough Compter, the last place of confinement of the whole number in London which Howard describes. It was out of repair and ruinous, had no infirmary, and no bedding; while most of the inmates were poor creatures from the court of conscience who lay there till their debts were paid.

It is dreary enough to pursue this pilgrimage from prison to prison; but it is instructive as an illustration of the fallen state of humanity. Where but in a world where things are sadly out of order, and the relations of the creature to the Creator are disturbed, could such flagrant abuses prevail under the colour of political justice? Nor can we help congratulating our country, and blessing the God of nations, for the improved state of things existing in our prisons at the present day, mainly through the instrumentality of him whose shadow we have been following. It was a tremendous stronghold of iniquity that he dared to assault, enough to make the courage quail in even a braver heart by nature than his own; but sustained by help from heaven he nobly carried through his mission, and crowned it with a success which, if not complete, was signal. His life was a truly earnest one, a battle with wrong, and an errand of richest mercy. 'Tis pleasant to follow poets and painters through their career of elegant literature and art; but we feel ourselves to be in a far different presence, one

that gives us inspiring and solemn views of human duty, as we track the footsteps of John Howard. He has something more serious to do than to gather flowers and echo back nature's sweet music; he has to trample on serpents, to rend asunder chains, and to let rays of light and love into the cells of the captive. Appropriate is the statue to him in St. Paul's, with huge iron manacles and fetters under-foot, and a great key in his hand. But, after all, Howard only walked at a humble distance in the footsteps of Him whom the Hebrew seer described as binding up the brokenhearted, proclaiming liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison-doors to them that were bound. Howard's benevolence was but a reflected beam of his, who gave himself for the redemption of our race out of a bondage worse than that of English or even Algerian gaols. His beneficent course was only an outgrowth of the gospel he embraced.

The story of Howard's personal exploits almost exhausts our store of London associations in connection with his name. We remember only one more, of a very different character from the foregoing, With this we must close our paper. Great Ormondstreet has been the residence of several celebrities. There lived Hicks, the learned author of the Thesaurus; there lived Dr. Mead, and Dr. Stukeley, and Dr. Hawkesworth; there, too, lived Lord Chancellor Thurlow, when he was robbed of the great seal by a gang of housebreakers; and there, too, for a little while, Howard took up his London abode, in a house left him by his sister. While there, a female of rather forbidding appearance made repeated ineffectual attempts to see the philanthropist. At last she succeeded, and gained admittance to the library. He thought, from the visitor's look, that one of the other sex was come to him disguised, with some evil intent. So he rung the bell and intimated a wish that the servant should remain in the room, But it was quite needless; for the stranger turned out to be a real woman, but a

rather enthusiastic worshipper: for she first poured forth a flood of extravagant compliments, and then took her leave, declaring that, after having seen the man she so much admired, she could go home and die in peace.

Christian principle was the foundation of all the excellences of John Howard. He did not adopt religion in later life, when wearied of the world. It was not in his case a last resort after the exhaustion of every other method of seeking happiness. He was the child of religious parents. His father had paid attention to his spiritual culture. He, in early youth, felt the charms of the service of God, The fresh spring tide of his being was devoted to the honour and glory of his Maker. Thus he had a safeguard among such temptations as beset a young man of property entering upon life. When he became, according to common expression, "his own master," happily, he felt that there was a very important sense in which he was by no means his own. Freed from the restraint of his guardians, he was conscious of the obligations which he owed his God. The earliest portions of his diary breathe a spirit of fervent devotion, which suffered no abatement, but rather increased, during the subsequent periods of his active life. Religion did not occupy some inferior place in his heart, but it was enthroned in his affections, and ever exerted over his whole nature a supreme sway. He observed the Divine order of duty, "Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness." No one can study Howard's history without discovering that religion, in his estimation, was the first law, the chief interest, the grand end, and the main happiness of life. Nor was his religion of the ceremonial cast, of the pharisaical order, of the rationalistic stamp-it was thoroughly evangelical. It was religion such as is taught in the New Testament, such as was exemplified in the lives of the apostles, such as is produced by the Spirit of God. Its fresh, earnest, impassioned expression is found in the following extract from his journal, written at the