recent period, when a partial reform was introduced by a wise and salutary legislative enactment, to purify, quantum valeat, the Queen's Bench, or more poetically, cleanse this Augean stable, every species of vice and crime were perpetrated within these walls. Corrupted principles, instilled by precept and example, eradicated the "still, small of conscience, which feebly whispered in the bosom of the youthful prodigal, that imprudence and dishonesty were different offendings, that misfortune teaches wisdom, and the sad recollection of past folly might yet redeem "the ruin he had wrought," and eventually restore him to society. His better angel at times would warn the captive, that extravagance had not deprived him of caste, and, that with honest exertion, he might yet remove the debtor-burthen from his back, and reclaim his lost position; while one foul act would close his moral history, as

"Honor, like life, once lost, is lost for ever."

But would not these low whisperings of principle be speedily overpowered in the general encouragement, that urged folly on to crime? and the tainted atmosphere of a den of infamy, blight, beyond recovery, the morale of the wretched youth exposed to all its damning contamination?

In the criminal statistics of Newgate, the opening of many a vicious career, that closed in ignominious death, to this place might be traced back easily; facilis descensus averni, and a room in the Bench not infrequently led the occupant by easy steps, to "sleep his last sleep" in the condemned cell

Criminal instruction was not confined to thimble-rigging and sleightof-hand. Here, many a note was forged, and here many a base coin was fabricated; and the celebrated halfpenny, by which low gamblers still cheat at "pitch and toss," was invented and manufactured, when within these walls, by the celebrated Captain Montgomery.

The general description of the place, as it was some dozen years ago, will be best understood from an extracted passage in a prisoner's petition, laid on the table of the House of Commons. After the preliminary forms, the statement thus proceeds :"That the Prison which had become the most extensive and brothel of the metropolis; that the services in the prison are neglected or indecorously administered, and the restraints and consolations of religion, so vitally important in an institution such as the warden has long presided over, are weakened or placed out of the reach of its inmates; that corruption of manners and morals, prostitution, drunkenness, with its consequent disease and death, gambling and robbery, are all grievously and inevitably extended under this negligent and vicious system of Prison Government; thus adding to the unavoidable wretchedness and distress of imprisonment for debt, and during the long period of its continuance diffusing ruinous effects, more or less, over a mass of more than fifty thousand individuals, com‐ mitted by the Court of King's Bench to the custody of this officer; and, also, over the suffering, once innocent, but in too many instances corrupted families of many of those unhappy individuals."

Bad as the place is still, what must have been its quondam state when no restrictive regulations classified its infamous community?

* A fashionable swindler, capitally convicted of forgery, who anticipated the hangman, the night before he was to suffer, by swallowing poison in his cell.

The convicted rogue consorted with the simpleton, snapped up under mesne process, by a west-end tradesman, who had first led the silly boy into debt, and pounced upon him when he, poor fool! fancied himself in full security. The victim of the swindler-the man not wilfully but accidentally unfortunate-the careless sailor-the broken soldier-were torn from their homes, and indiscriminately herded in the same small cell with some couple of scoundrels whose escape from the gallows, or evasion of the hulks, was considered by their ruffian confreres as events almost miraculous. This enormity in punishment inflicted upon poverty, was effected by the thing called "chumming," or huddling of two or three people into the same room, regardless of every conventional or criminal distinction. The reduced gentleman might find in his strange bedfellow some discarded groom; and the proud spirit, who had crowned

"The imminent deadly breach,"

be confederated with scoundrels, in thieves' parlance, known by the title of "macers and magsmen."

But this infernal system was not confined to the imprudent and unfortunate; for, as it hath been truthfully observed, in half the cases of imprisonment for debt, woman is the sufferer. Will man confide the secret of his difficulties to her whose happiness he tenderly regards, and to whom a disclosure of embarrassment would occasion the most poignant misery? The storm, poor wretch! he fancies may blow over; and, until hope is ended, in mercy to the feelings of her he loves, will he not hide the secret of his misfortunes? He argues that the evil disclosure had better be delayed while it is possible. Let her dream on in fancied happiness; too soon, God knows! the vision will be dissolved. While there is lead resting on his heart, he musters a languid smile; and his mental absence in the day, his startings in the night, he ascribes to press of business. To the last he carries on the kindly delusion-ay! until he is picked up by some Jew bailiff, whom he can no longer bribe - and from that den of dirt and extortion, called a sponging-house, is removed by habeas to the Bench.

Well, before the present code of prison discipline was introduced, how would he find himself when lodged in Banco Reginæ? He bought out the blackguards who held his wretched room in joint tenancy, giving them, probably, the best portion of his means, by weekly payments, to brutalize in what were called whistling-shops, and sty afterwards where they could find a shelter. A meal abridged would be a light consideration for the liberty of communing with his young wife, or daughter, or sister. What must that man's feelings have been when he found a professional profligate cantoned directly opposite, and a woman, hacknied in debauchery, holding eternal orgies with the most depraved within the prison walls, and, in drunken recklessness, inflicting upon ears hitherto unsullied by verbal impurities, language that in a brothel would be repudiated? Imagine a sort of rabbit-warren infested by dissolute men and abandoned women-no hours to limit the drunken revelry, which open beer-shops, and spirituous liquors attainable for being sent for, must keep in eternal turbulence. Fancy a man of letters or of business, in the first floor-a gin-shop underneath him-a coiner working over head. In one room, a Cyprian-in another, a returned transport-and in a third, a fellow half his time labouring, from eternal gin-drinking, under delirium tremens—add a chancery prisoner

VOL. XXIV.

T T

or two-some female dotard, or clown who cannot write his nameand you have the Bench-or rather a building of it—delineated as it existed half a dozen years ago.

The moral system of the prison, then in operation-I mean before arrest on mesne process was abolished-will admit the introduction of an illustrative anecdote. Mark ye yonder personage in black-his eyeglass gilt-his cane headed in proper keeping with mosaic-his shirt is frilled his sables have undergone frequent renovation-his style of man is what is expressively termed "the shabby genteel"-his age may be close on seventy. That gentleman is what, in prison parlance, is termed a touter. He gets up small cases by the job, and pays some discreditable attorney a per-centage for the privilege of using his

name.

Mr. Isaacs was a Jew solicitor, and, in the palmy days of this prison, drove a roaring trade-at least, trade enough to enable him to drive a carriage. He was really a useful man-discounted bills, obtained stag bail to any amount, and, did a gentleman's cause in court totter for a strengthening affidavit, he, Mr. Isaacs, would prove on corporeal oath, that a person on Monday on Eel-pie Island, was, on Tuesday, in sight of Otaheite. Long and useful was this worthy man's career, until, some twenty years ago, a lapse of recollection on his part, was called perjury, and the name of Emanuel Isaacs for ever removed from the law-list. This visitation, however, did not crush the spirit of this exemplary practitioner. He was "scotched not killed;" and the third day after he was struck from the rolls, he proved that his game was first-rate-his resources inexhaustible.

Lord Frederick Fosberry, when riding the preceding evening in Rotten Row, had been accosted by a servant out of livery, and requested to favour Mr. Sloman with his company. Lord Frederick had a dinner engagement that day at the Earl of Wintercastle's; but, though Mr. Sloman was but a commoner, he waived the nobler invitation; for, indeed, it was too pressing to be got over. The next evening found him in the Bench, and seated in "5" number "4.”

"Curse it, Wellesley, what a bore!" exclaimed the fresh arrival, as he pushed the claret across the table. "Just concluded my treaty with Kate Hamilton, and that vulgar brewer, little M-, will take advantage now, and certainly outbid me.”

"D-d nuisance, my dear Fred. But there goes the best unbeliever that ever eschewed swine-flesh; and, my life upon it, he'll come to the rescue, if any man in England can."

The unbeliever was called up, and Mr. Emanuel Isaacs immediately presented himself.

"What would you give," inquired the Israelite, after he had listened to the narrative of Lord Frederick's delicate distress, "if this Kitty Hamerton or Hamilton was snug in the Bench, to-morrow?"

"Oh! the man that could effect it should command my eternal gra

titude and-”

"Jist name the rowdy you'd stump up," said Mr. Isaacs, who disliked long speeches.

"Will twenty do?" said the peer.

"Add another five-pound flimsy and the thing's a bargain," returned the Jew.

"Done with you, butcher!" returned Lord Frederick.

The ex-solicitor pulled out a piece of paper, noted down the terms

of agreement, asked the name of the lady, and her residence, with other particulars, to prevent mistakes, and, on the following evening, Miss Hamilton, arrested at the suit of a Madame Larandieu, defunct a dozen years before, was introduced to the Bench, and conveniently accommodated with an adjoining apartment to Lord Frederick's.

"Observe! as evidenced in this case," said the little devil," the utility of a harmless affidavit."

"Prodigious!" was my usual exclamation.

"Not only," continued the two-sticked gentleman, "is the society, but also the arrangement of this prison radically altered. You may remark that modern piece of brick-work that shuts in the lady prisoners as effectually as if they were en pension in a convent. Look back to the shoulder of the building, vis-a-vis to that where the patronesses of flinty-hearted dressmakers are ungratefully consigned for ducks of bonnets, polkas, and pellerines; that is a sort of criminal department, and men grin hourly from these barred casements, than whom minor criminals are ganged in Woolwich Dockyard."

I obeyed the little man, and looked in the direction that he pointed to. In the lady-ward, a round white arm was gracefully placed in classic repose between the bars, the fair proprietrix exhibiting not "short glimpses of a breast of snow," but a bust more extensively denuded than the wax-figures which ornament the plate-glass window of a fashionable coiffeur.

"Little, Master Asmodeus, left to the imagination by that fair detenue." "She may,

66

Mad, sir,-mad as a bedlamite," returned the devil. poor idiot, date her insanity to a solicitor and a swindler in the railroad bubbles."

"What!" I exclaimed. "I fancied that in locomotive speculation, the right of ruin was reserved to our sex exclusively, and that women were barred from operations in Stag Alley, as peremptorily as they were excluded from the Corner.""

"Not at all. A lady has the privilege to destroy herself, and can readily effect it through the agency of some d-d good-natured friend, and this a brief memoir of that romantic looking gentlewoman with the bare arm will establish.

"There are a thouusand instances of women, under salutary control, passing through life respectably, who, were they left to their own direction, would hurry in double quick time to your very humble servant," and the little gentleman made a most magnificent bow, that would have astonished Baron Nathan. "But two years since that form, reclining gracefully against the barred window of a debtor's prison, might have been seen ornamenting a casement in the government house at where her deceased husband held the honourable appointment of Port Admiral.

Wayside Pictures

THROUGH

FRANCE, BELGIUM, AND GERMANY.

XIV.-LIFE ON THE ROCK.

The danger of crossing the sands to Mont St. Michel has been egregiously exaggerated. Tourists have a way of confounding their sensations with the objects which produce them; and out of this perpetual recurrence to self spring the chief errors and fallacies we find in books of travels. The writers rarely judge of circumstances by their relation to each other, but by their relation to themselves. Thus one traveller, who believes himself to be strictly impartial and discriminating, never can get anything to eat in a country where some millions of people dine luxuriously every day in the year; and another, put out of his way by the vivacity of the people, attributes it all to hollowness and levity. Excesses on the other side, with a little unconscious vanity in them, may be traced to the same source. The sense of pleasure or of peril sets up the slightest incidents in a mirage of the imagination; a common-place satisfaction is vented in a rhapsody, and an ordinary adventure expanded into an exploit. The tourist makes the whole scene about him subordinate to his own importance, and becomes insensibly the hero, instead of the artist of the picture. It is in this heroic way the hazards of the approach to Mont St. Michel have been so ridiculously over-stated. Hazard, of course, there is; but it may be easily avoided, if people will only exercise their common sense.

There are three routes from Avranches to the Mont, varying in length and in the extent of strand to be traversed. By one of these routes, the shortest, you have a league and a half of the sands to cross; by another, the longest, only half a league. This latter route, which looks the most tempting, is the least desirable, and should not be undertaken without good information as to the state of the strand, which is here intersected by numerous deep channels of flowing water, sometimes so swollen by the action of the tide as to become nearly impassable. Returning by this route, we saw the track of the commandant's carriage, which had crossed in that direction in the morning, and concluded, therefore, that we were tolerably safe; yet our horses were forced to wade up to their girths in the gullies that lay between us and the shore. If a traveller were to trust to his own judgment in crossing these streams, he might possibly be swallowed up; but men who are well acquainted with the peculiarities of the surface, and who almost live in the water, are stationed here to pilot you over for the trifling consideration of a few sous, and it is clearly your own fault if you are swamped or drowned. In no case is it necessary, whichever route you select, to cross on foot. The strand is practicable for carriages up to the base of the Mont.

The whole secret of the danger is susceptible of a very simple explanation. During spring-tide Mont St. Michel is an island, approachable only when the tide has receded; during neap-tide it is