spring or fountain water: and this shall be his
punishment till he die."

How now? Does he falter? Will he plead?
No. He answers the judge with a look of sullen
pride and resolution, and is borne away.

Another change of scene, and we stand, a few
mornings later, in the Old Bailey Press Yard,
so called from its being the place where refractory
criminals used to be subjected to the
terrible peine forte et dure— "the strong and
hard pain." * Several persons are standing about
this dismal yard, closed in by high prison walls,
from which the narrow strip of sky above looks
alien and far off. The sheriffs are here, in all
the solemnity of their robes and chains; for the
work of torture, as by law established, must be
conducted ceremoniously. Some officers from
the adjacent Newgate are here also; as well as
three or four gentlemen in deep black clothes,
who support another gentleman in their midst.
These latter are Major Strangeways and his
friends, who, notwithstanding the heinousness
of the criminal's offence, have gathered round
him in this last bitter trial, and will not desert
him in his agonies. From them he is delivered
to the sheriffs, who conduct him to a dungeon
on one side of the yard, his friends following
closely. In the obscure light of this cell we see
a heavy wooden framework, of a triangular
shape, lying upon the floor; and beside it are
several iron weights.

We now hear one of the sheriffs speaking:
"If the prisoner has any arrangements to make,
or wishes to go through any devotions, he must
do so quickly, for the time is growing short."
He answers that he wishes to say his prayers,
and he requests his friends to join him.
Presently, a murmur of subdued voices is heard
in that stony place; and then, after a brief
pause, the criminal says that he is ready. At
the same moment he takes off a long mourning
cloak, and exhibits himself clothed from head
to foot in a white garment, which, answering to
his colourless face and lips, gives him a solemn,
almost spectral, appearance. But otherwise he
is altered for the better. His violence has given
place to a quiet and grave bearing, and his eyes
have something of the prophetic grandeur of
death.

The terrible instrument (purposely constructed
with a view to pressing on the region of the heart,
and so expediting death, for in this, as in other
respects, the severity of the sentence is mitigated)
is now placed on the breast of the
sufferer, and the signal previously agreed to for
laying on the weights is given. " Lord Jesus,
receive my soul!"

Turn away your heads, for this is no fit sight
for human eyes! Has no one got a sheet to
throw over that face which passes from white
to black so quickly, and changes every minute?
Lay on more weights, that he may die the
sooner! These are too light. More weights!
There are no more weights to be had. The
sufferer is a strong man, who fights a desperate
fight with death, and can bear more than most
persons. In this extremity, his friends mount
upon the press, and add their own weight to the
wood and iron; averting their faces from his
face, and remaining there for several minutes.

Enough! All is over. Gentlemen, you may
stand down. Officers, remove the press, and the
thing that lies beneath it; for the heart of Major
Strangeways is crushed, and the wisdom of our
ancestors is once more apparent.
—————

* This form of torture, with some mitigations,
continued in use until near the middle of last
century.

THE GIRL PROM THE WORKHOUSE.

WHAT have we to show for the thirty thousand
a year spent on the teaching of the young in
workhouses? Instruction without education.
Next to nothing in the case of boys. Worse
than nothing in the case of girls. There the
girls are not young criminals as in a reformatory,
but simply destitute of means, and dependent
upon those who undertake to teach them how in
after years they may earn bread for themselves
and be of some use in the world. These children
are poor without blame; they cannot help having
been born dependent upon parents unable,
whether through misfortune or misconduct, to
give them requisite support. They cannot help
their orphanhood. Still of the age when nature
makes them dependent upon adult help for maintenance
and education into the future duties of
their lives, the charge of them, dropped from
private hands, falls into those of the guardians of
the poor. No young girl can be rightly trained
into a woman's sense of work and duty, under
conditions that exclude all part in home affections,
all perception of the varied duties of
family life. Where nothing is done to cultivate
into strength, wholesome affections; where washing
is done by machinery, where cooking is done
upon a great system having nothing in common
with the pot on the cottage fire, and where the
thriftless vicious talk of the elder ne'er-do-weels
of their sex is common in their ears, girls are
ill bred into the power of self-help. They leave
such a place with little sober thought of becoming
useful earnest happy wives. They must come
back as their lives draw to a close, to live again
upon the rates. The number of girls who do so
return is twice that of the boys. There were
more than thirteen thousand illegitimate children
in the English workhouses last New Year's Day
— ten thousand five hundred and more of them
under three years old and with their mothers:
the rest motherless— and their number never
will be less, until destitute young girls get something
like real aid out of the rates.

A little has been done here and there by
the good sense of ladies. Miss Twining, for
example, has, at Number Twenty-two New
Ormond-street, not far from the Hospital for
Sick Children, an Industrial Home for Young
Women, in which girls between the ages of
thirteen and twenty-five, either taken from the
workhouse or withdrawn as they are about first
to cross its threshold, are received, and in which