"that if she is waiting for anybody in there, he
will not recognise her when he comes out, for
all her constancy. There are none in under
twenty years, so eleven years more of this work
will hardly add to her beauty!"

He said this with an awkward attempt to
laugh; but there was an expression in his eye
that showed me it was but an effort to conceal
his sympathy, and he went on: "Any one who
has observed her, as we have, can see that she
is dying now. Yes, she is killing herself, for
certain, about the one in there."

I was watching the poor little creature, when
she came quickly towards us, gazed, in her
nervous half-frightened manner, through the
gate, then, with a hurried "Good morning" to
my friend, walked hastily away, and disappeared.
The good-natured fellow had lifted his cap, and
returned her greeting; but looked half-ashamed
of his politeness, and, in a semi-apologetic tone,
began to explain to me that she always said that
when her weary walk was over for the day, and
added:

"She is so well known, that nobody thinks
of stopping or questioning her, and this
pavement is open to the public. There are only
a few of us who can remember what a little
beauty she was, nine years ago. She was
always in tears, then, but now she only looks
sad—as sad as ever. She had black hair then.
Once, I asked her if I should try to get
her an order to enter, and see any one in there.
This so touched her, that she would have
fallen, if I had not caught her. I shall never
forget her face. She looked, somehow, frightened
—I don't know what else to call it. She
never answered me a word; but, as soon as
she could stand, crept slowly away, steadying
herself by the wall. She raised her hand, once,
as if she was going to say something; but she
did not speak, and went away, as I said, not
coming back for several days. I began to feel
sorry; thinking that, though I meant well, I
might have scared the poor creature away; but,
at last (on the fourth or fifth morning), there she
was again, looking so changed and ill, that I
only knew her by her ways. That day she
said 'Good morning,' for the first time. It's
more than eight years, now, and nobody has
meddled with her since."

I asked him if it were possible to get news of
a prisoner, through him.

He answered that the convicts leave all identity
outside the walls. Within, they are nameless
units, distinguished merely by a number. It is
only the highest authorities who can identify or
communicate individually with any convict.

As I left the gates, my thoughts returned
from the pitiable watcher at the gate to the
convicts within it. Could nothing be done
to ameliorate the moral condition of the
imprisoned outcasts? Did no man care for
their souls? The enforced labour, the hard
diet, the rigid disciplinary regulations, these,
though painful, could be endured, and might
each in the end bear wholesome fruit. It is a
system that degrades the spirit, and extinguishes
those last glimmerings of self-respect which
sometimes fight so hard for life; this it is which
is most inimical to repentance, and wages insensate
war against the very object it is the dearest
aim of punishment to promote. The horrors of
Norfolk Island were themselves the immediate
sources of crimes too fearful to recal. Degrade
a man into a beast, without stupifying his
intellect to the beastly level, and wonder not that
the maddened wretch—abandoned, as it seems,
by God and man—yields up the relics of his
judgment to the most ghastly conceptions of
crime. Is not this playing into the hands of the
tempter? True, we, in England, have been so
eager to ameliorate this real "darkness within,"
as to be betrayed into an opposite danger; but
even this, with its acknowledged inconveniences,
was a noble error compared with that
which, while confessing that a criminal is not
deserving of death, eliminates him from the
pale of humanity, extinguishes his individuality,
and, teaching him neither penitence nor
resignation, leaves him to weeping and gnashing of
teeth, without one gleam of hope.

Now, I could understand why the poor little
woman dared not relieve her heart-thirst by
gazing on her fallen hero. The remembrance
of him, even in his days of recklessness and
crime, was more tolerable than the sight of his
sullen apathy—the offspring of despair.

THE SHOP-SIDE OF ART.

I.

THE earth is full of couples who are made
for each other; not only of couples whose
destiny it is to love, but of those whose destiny
it is to hate. For every spider there is created
a fly; for every cat a mouse; for every bird a
worm; for every "innocent" bill-holder a really
innocent bill-acceptor, and for every picture-dealer
a picture-buyer. It is doubtful if that
favourite target of small divines the world
could be kept revolving in mid-air without such
a provision of nature, and, therefore, if we
record the habits and manners of antagonistic
races, let us do it with so little party-feeling,
and so much philosophical calmness, that
something like the truth may be arrived at.

II.

Though Mr. Huggin was born some twenty
years before Mr. Eizak Sleman, yet the latter
gentleman was evidently destined to exert a
peculiar influence over the former. The start
that Mr. Huggin got in life over Mr. Sleman
seemed only to have been used in preparing for
that gentleman's appearance. If money was
accumulated by Mr. Huggin—and it was
accumulated—in a business so unpictorial as the
tallow-trade, it was allowed to grow in all its
rank luxuriance until Mr. Sleman presented
himself to pluck it.

III.

In tracing the rise and progress of Mr. Eizak
Sleman, we are struck by the many changes