prison is to them a matter of life; to him it is only an accident. His affair is to get through his confinement at the least possible cost of pain and exertion. His superiors wish only to have order; and he fools them to the top of their bent. As Mr. Crawford pointed out in his report, and as every one interested in the experiment has seen, the system of isolation makes very good, submissive prisoners; and, if this were the only end desiderated, separation would unquestionably be the thing. But is it? Do we want nothing more than a palace-prison conducted with military precision and regularity? England generally looks for something beyond this, if we mistake not. The object is to make good citizens, to restrain the falling, to restore the fallen. And a discipline is efficacious or not as far as it produces these effects-not farther.

How, then, does the Pentonville plan act in these respects? In order to teach the untamed criminal to restrain the violence of his passions, it isolates him from his fellows, and proposes to give him the power of overcoming temptation by removing him out of its reach! Of all questionable means to effect a given end, this seems to be about the most questionable. In the name of reason, what discipline can the cell afford to the uneducated? As a class, criminals have two cardinal defects-the prolific parents of all their sins and crimes-idleness and irregularity of mind. By irregularity of mind, we mean that want of strength, order, native virtue, and constancy in the mental constitution, which is commonly

termed want of principle. Both these defects arise from weakness; but one is physical, the other moral. Both may be cured partially or entirely :-but then the cure must be adapted to the form and nature of the disease. Penal science admits of no universal pills, warranted to cure any ailment, from a cold to a consumption. The problem is, to find some means by which these great defects of character can be overcome. But how is a man to learn to love labour,to forget his habit of idleness? In the cell, shut up with only his own thoughts to brood on ? Then, again, can a man learn to restrain his passions in the cell? He is subject to no temptation there. He has neither pretext nor opportunity to do wrong—to commit any fault. He overcomes no evil prompting : he gains no strength, for he has no trial: his discipline is at best a mere negation. The advocates of the isolation system point to the comparative freedom from prison punishments in Pentonville as a proof of the excellence of their scheme. It is no

proof of excellence at all. We have lunatics in strait-jackets, very quiet and very harmless, who, if out of them, would be very violent. But is this a good argument for putting all lunatics, without exception, in strait-jackets? It is true, they can do very little harm under such a restraint; perhaps little more than a prisoner can in his cell. The cell is, in fact, the criminal's strait-jacket. It keeps him very quiet, makes him very obedient; but the question, nevertheless, remains open-Does it make him a better man? What we want are sound minds, not

quiet men in strait-jackets; good citizens, not submissive criminals in silent cells.

A penal system that excludes temptation, because it may necessitate punishment, is radically unsound. The aim should be to obtain conditions, surrounding the offender in his state of expiation, as near as is possible, consistent with strict discipline, to those in which the new-made man will be placed on liberation from the gripe of the law. No convict will have to inhabit a cell on his restoration to society; the austere discipline of the cell is therefore lost to him, with all its lessons, when he quits it. But many will have to exist in workshops; and all will have to mix with their fellow-men again in one way or another. It is here that the social, or, as we may venture to call it for it is really his when properly administered the Howardian system has the great advantage over its rival. Its punishments are more numerous; but then its punishments are useful and corrective. It offers to the prisoner temptations similar to those which surround men in the world and in the workshop; and though the ill-trained offender often breaks through rules which do not bind him-like the walls of the isolated cell as with iron bands, his fault, always followed by an infliction of pain or the deprivation of an indulgence in some sort proportioned to the enormity of the breach of law which led to it, is itself a lesson and a discipline. Where there is no liberty of action, there is no merit in restraint. Where temptation is excluded, there is no discipline worthy of the name.

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It is a trial of nothing; a probation which admits of no proofs. It is a mere negation, a moral trance; and criminals are not a race which are likely to profit much by lying fallow.

How far the discipline of Pentonville affects the mind, it would be presumptuous to assert. Opinion is greatly divided upon that point. There can be no doubt, however, that it gives a low, listless, melancholy expression to the face. Persons who have placed themselves under its protection certainly look subdued. Whether they all, after a time, pass into the earlier stages of idiocy, as some assert, we know not; but the frequent changes and modifications introduced into the system indicate strong fears on the part of those who profess the largest confidence in their work. The system is far less rigorously enforced now than it was at first; and the march is continually towards the associate and labour system. In fact, it is even now little more "separate" at Pentonville than at Coldbath-fields. For instance, in one place you may see eight or ten men in the garden working; if you ask the meaning of this departure from the rule of the cell, you will learn that this "gardening list" is a new regulation, by which the tedium and silence of the cell are diminished, in cases where the inmate could bear them no longer safely. And if you refer to the last report of the commissioners for the government of the model prison, you will find that body declaring that "the further extension of" this singular innovation upon the original plan "may become a salutary safeguard

to our system." But what are we to think of the system, model and costly though it be, whose most earnest advocates admit that, as a safeguard, it requires such an alien element? Again, in another part of the grounds, you come upon a large tent, from which proceeds a strange sound of revelry. Well, what can this saturnalia, for such a place, mean? Here are fifty of the prisoners, laughing, shouting, talking, without let or hindrance, very jolly, and in high spirits. But, what is it about? You may wonder, and think it a ludicrous farce; but the cause of it is serious enough for the muse of tragedy to deal with.

The first batch or two of men who were sent from Pentonville to the Australian colonies were literally unable to take care of themselves on the voyage. A day or two after the dead weight of silence and isolation was taken off, a great number of them became half idiotic, that is, light-headed, low-spirited, silly, and a few (the worst) subject to sudden faintings. This strange fact led to many modifications of the system, and, amongst others, to this one. For some weeks before being sent away, the men are now put into association; made acquainted again with the human face; and encouraged to chat with one another, and make merry. Since this change was introduced, the cases of hysterical convulsions have decreased in number; but they still take place occasionally, as if to remind you that their cause is not entirely removed. The more, however, you depart from the strict principle of isolation, the