of such perfect and thorough cleanness. The
bread, the cocoa, soup, meat, all the various
sorts of food, in their respective cooking-places,
we tasted; found them of excellence superlative.
The prisoners sat at work, light work,
picking oakum and the like, in airy apartments
with glass roofs, of agreeable temperature and
perfect ventilation; silent, or at least conversing
only by secret signs; others were
out, taking their hour of promenade in clean
flagged courts; methodic composure, cleanliness,
peace, substantial wholesome comfort,
reigned everywhere supreme."

This is the great model experiment. We can
easily reverse the picture. It is but a short walk
from Pentonville to Smithfield—scarcely two
miles—yet, in the prison world, the two places
are antipodes. Here, within the hallowed
precincts of the City, stands Giltspur Street
Compter, upon the state of which we produce
another witness. Mr. Dixon, in his work on
London Prisons, testifies that in this jail the
prisoners "sleep in small cells, little more than
half the size of the model cell at Pentonville,
which is calculated (on the supposition that the
cell is to be ventilated on the best plan which
science can suggest, regardless of cost) to be
just large enough for one inmate. The cell in
Giltspur Street Compter is little more than half
the size, and is either not ventilated at all, or is
ventilated very imperfectly. I have measured
it, and know exactly the quantity of air which
it will hold, and have no doubt but that it
contains less than any human being ought to
breathe in, in the course of a night. Well, in
this cell, in which there is hardly room for
them to lie down, I have seen five persons locked
up, at four o'clock in the day, to be there confined,
in darkness, in idleness, to pass all those
hours, to do all the offices of nature, not
merely in each other's presence, but crushed
by the narrowness of their den into a state of
filthy contact which brute beasts would have
resisted to the last gasp of life! Think of
these five wretched beings—men with souls, and
gifted with human reason—condemned, day
by day, to pass in this unutterably loathsome
manner two-thirds of their time! Can we
wonder if these men come out of prison,
after three or four months of such treatment,
prepared to commit the most revolting crimes?
Could five of the purest men in the world live
together in such a manner without losing every
attribute of good which had once belonged to
them? He would be a rash man who would
dare to answer—'Yes.' Take another fact
from Newgate. In any of the female wards
may be seen, a week before the Sessions, a
collection of persons of every shade of guilt,
and some who are innocent. I remember
one case particularly. A servant girl, of
about sixteen, a fresh-looking healthy creature,
recently up from the country, was charged
by her mistress for stealing a brooch. She
was in the same room—lived all day, slept
all night—with the most abandoned of her sex.
They were left alone; they had no work to do;
no books—except a few tracts for which they
had no taste—to read. The whole day was
spent, as is usual in such prisons, in telling
stories—the gross and guilty stories of their
own lives. There is no form of wickedness,
no aspect of vice, with which the poor creature's
mind would not be compelled to grow
familiar in the few weeks she passed in Newgate
awaiting trial. When the day came,
the evidence against her was found to be the
lamest in the world, and she was at once
acquitted. That she entered Newgate innocent
I have no doubt; but who shall answer
for the state in which she left it?"

Let us not wrong the City in supposing it
singular in promoting these loathsome prison
scenes. A hundred passages, in nearly as
many blue books, are ready for quotation, to
show how some of the 'great experiments' in
not a few of the National prisons have turned
out. One, however, will do. Here is a
sentence or two from the Government's own
report of the state of one of its own hulks
at Woolwich—the same Government which
has been so good as to dispense upwards of
90,000l. of the public money in building the
Pentonville Model. We cannot quote it
entire, by reason of some of the passages
being too revolting for reproduction in these
pages:—

"In the hospital ship, the "Unité," the great
majority of the patients were infested with
vermin, and their persons in many instances,
particularly their feet, begrimed with dirt.
No regular supply of body linen had been
issued; so much so, that many men had been
five weeks without a change; and all record
had been lost of the time when the blankets
had been washed; and the number of sheets
was so insufficient, that the expedient had
to be resorted to of only a single sheet at
a time to save appearances. Neither towels
nor combs were provided for the prisoners'
use. * * * On the admission of new cases
into the hospital, patients were directed to
leave their beds and go into hammocks, and
the new cases were turned into the vacated
beds, without changing the sheets."

Is anything more shocking than the Compter,
Newgate, and the Unité to be conceived?
Do travellers tell us of anything worse in
Russia, or China, or Old Tartary? "O! yes;
there is Austria and its life-punishments
in Spielberg," some one may suggest, "surely
there is no London parallel for that." But
Mr. Dixon answers there is:—in the Millbank
Penitentiary. 'The dark cells,' he
says, 'are fearful places, and sometimes melancholy
mistakes are made in committing
persons to them. You descend about twenty
steps from the ground-floor into a very dark
passage leading into a corridor, on one side
of which the cells—small, dark, ill-ventilated,
and doubly barred—are ranged. No glimpse
of day ever comes into this fearful place.
The offender is locked up for three days, and
fed on bread and water only. There is only