the purpose of obliging the debtors to go to
church, and, John Bull like, they determined
to show their independence of spiritual
control by not attending church at all. Sunday
was a very dreary day with us. The knowledge
that on this day all our friends and relatives
had plenty of leisure to come and see us, but
that some cant on the part of the magistrates
or City authorities prevented them, was enough
to make us down-hearted; it was, in fact, a
day that we all most cordially hated. I must
add that the Pharisaical regulation falls much
harder upon the working man than upon
others. The wife of an artisan, journeyman,
or labourer who is in prison for debt, has in
most cases to support the family whilst her
husband is shut up. The poor woman
generally manages to scrape together a few
shillings in the week (a bare subsistence for herself
and children) by washing or going out as
charwoman. To repair all the way to Whitecross-
street on a week-day is to take so much out
of her hard-earned wages, and to diminish the
amount of food she can give her children.
Surely there can be no sin in allowing her to
see her husband on the Sunday. "Sunday
used to be the pleasantest day we had, sir,"
said one of the warders to me; "it seemed
to do the old place good—to be a bit of
sunshine like—to see all the poor men's wives and
their kids here for three or four hours. The
prisoners used to rejoice when Sunday come
round, and I have seen every mortal man
amongst them as was a churchman, go to the
morning service on that day just to thank God
that they should see their folks again. But
now they hate the day, and do nothing but
grumble or cuss from the morning to the night.
I don't see much good in that sort of thing,
sir." Nor did I. Nor do I.

I had no notion, until I got into Whitecross-
street, that although the large practitioner in a
gentlemanly way who goes in for bankruptcy to
the tune of five or six thousand pounds, or
the Colossal Railway Contractor who does the
same to the tune of perhaps a couple of
millions, can, by means of the court, purge
himself of all his liabilities, but the poor man,
he whose debt is under twenty pounds, can
by means of the County Court be shut up
again and again for the same debt. When
I was in Whitecross-street, a prisoner was
brought in whom I had previously known. He
had been a groom in a gentleman's family for
many years, and, having saved a little money,
married, and set up a small greengrocer's shop
in the West-end. For some years, business had
gone pretty well with him; but latterly his own
sickness, and his wife's confinement at the
same time, had thrown him behind the world.
He owed a butcher nine pounds ten shillings
and sixpence. After promising to pay five
shillings a week towards clearing off the debt, and
failing to observe the instalments, his creditor
summoned him to the County Court. He
pleaded poverty, and had asked leave to pay
instalments of three shillings a week. The
judge ordered him to pay five shillings, and this
he did for some four or five weeks. But more
trouble came upon him. The wife died, and he
had to put his three children out to board. He
was unable to pay up his instalments, and was
imprisoned, for what a pleasant legal fiction
called Contempt of Court, for twenty days. As
a matter of course, his business went altogether
to the bad while he was in prison, and upon
his being released he gave up his shop, not
having the means of buying any goods. But
his creditor complained again that he did not
keep his terms, and he was a second time
sentenced to twenty days' imprisonment for the
same offence. At first I hardly believed this
man's story. But I was set right by one of
the Warders of the prison, who told me that
the case was by no means uncommon, and
that there often are on what is called the
county side of the prison upwards of two
hundred poor men—labourers, artisans, small
shopkeepers, hawkers, pedlars, servants out of
place, journeymen of various trades, and not a
few gentlemen in bad circumstances—who are
imprisoned for debts varying from a few
shillings to twenty pounds, and who are all liable
to be—and very many are—imprisoned again,
and again for the same debt. For them there
is no Bankruptcy Court, nor does any amount
of imprisonment clear them.

OLD STORIES RE-TOLD.

TRAFALGAR.

IN 1803, Napoleon, having secured the
alliance of Spain, ran his sword through the
Treaty of Amiens, and war then broke out
between England and France. Lord Nelson
was appointed commander of the Mediterranean
fleet, and for fourteen months blockaded the
harbour of Toulon, watchful as a cat for a
mouse. On the 18th of January, while the
English were anchored off Sardinia, the French fleet
slipped off to sea, but Nelson was upon their
track the instant the news reached him.

Although only forty-six years of age, Nelson
was already a shattered man. Fragile, thin, and
sickly, weakened by ague in childhood, beaten
down by fever in the East Indies, almost killed
by dysentery at Honduras, always sick at sea,
an eye lost at Corsica, an arm at Cadiz,
cut about the head at the battle of the Nile,
struck in the side in another engagement, his
cough dangerous, he scarcely hoped to fight
more than one more battle. Yet his heart was
sound as ever, and the unquenchable lion spirit
glowed within him, in spite of all vexatious
disappointments, the French reluctance to a fair
open sea-fight, and all the mean Admiralty
intrigues, shuffles, and ingratitudes. "My own
fleet," said the sea hero, in his own fervid way,
"is well officered and well manned, would to
God the ships were half as good!" The ships
were, in fact, scarcely fit to sustain the alternate
fretfulness and violence of that stormy winter in
the Mediterranean. "The French fleet," he wrote