and, as a rule, our guide said very quick.
There were criminals, it is true, who did not
seem to have the power of learning anything;
but these were the exceptions, and that generally
it was surprising in how short a time a
trade was learned, which, with an ordinary
apprentice, is a matter of years. Here it
was the one object; it became the only
interest, and was unceasingly worked at day
after day.

The prisoner who has been longest in this
prison has been there thirty years; many are
in for life; many for twenty years. There
are between five and six hundred at present
in the prison. The number of female prisoners
is very small in comparison with the
men. We found the women busy washing in
their wards,—a long row of very tidy-looking
women, in the whitest of borderless caps,
with white handkerchiefs pinned over their
grey dresses. Their countenances, as a whole,
were much more cheerful than those of the
men; we actually saw smiles! Here and
there, however was a heavy, uncouth countenance.
At one particular washing-tub stood
four women. Our conductor spoke to one
of them, this being a sign to us to notice
them. Two looked up, and fairly beamed
with smiles; one, a tall and very handsome
young girl, continued to wash away
with downcast eyes. I felt a sort of delicacy
in staring at her, her looks were so conscious
and modest. A fourth, a fat, ill-looking old
woman, also never looked at the visitors.
The two who smiled had remarkably agreeable
faces; one, with good features, and a
very mild expression; the other, a small
woman, and though with bloom on her cheeks,
a certain sad, anxious expression, about her
eyes and mouth. Of which of these four
women were we to hear a fearful history
related? The only one who looked evil was
the fat old woman.

As soon as we were in. the court, our conductor
said, "Now, what do you say about
those women?"

"Three out of the four," we remarked, "are
the only agreeable faces we have seen in the
prison; and, judging from this momentary
glance at their countenances, we should say
could not be guilty of much crime; perhaps
the fat old woman may be so; that tall young
girl, however, is not only handsome, but
gentle-looking."

"That tall young girl," replied our guide,
"was the one who, a year or two ago, murdered
her fellow-servant, and cutting up the
body, buried it in the garden; the little woman
next to her, some two years since, murdered
her husband; and the handsome, kind, motherly-
looking woman who stood next, destroyed
her child of seven years old.
The fat old woman is in only for a slight
offence;—so much for our judgment of
physiognomy!"

I cannot express the painful impressions
produced on me by the remembrance of this
group. As I returned home, all the faces I
met in the streets seemed to me, as it
were, masks. I saw faces in expression a
thousand times more evil than the countenances
of those three unhappy women. How
was it? Was it alone that some unusually
painful and frightful circumstances had
aroused passions in them which only slept in
the breasts of hundreds of other human beings
who wander about free and honourably in
the world; or was expression, after all, a
deception? In these three women, at the
moment we saw them, at all events, the
expression was really good and amiable.  I
cannot give an idea of the strange sort of
distrust which seized me. I looked at the
ladies who accompanied me, and said to myself
—your faces are not nearly so good in
expression and feature as theirs. I have been
looking at my own face, and it seems to me
that it, too, might just as well conceal some
frightful remembrance of crime.

I was quite glad when a friend proposed that
we should go and see a model of Milan cathedral,
made by an old Italian here. I was
thankful for anything to banish the remembrance
of the three women, and of those
round, beautiful hands and arms of the
young girl, which had once been stained
with blood.

We entered a very handsome house, and soon
were in the little room of Signor S. The
room was very small, but so bright and cheerful!
Flowers were in the bright little window,
the glass cabinets were filled with all imaginable
nick-nacks of glass, china, and various
small models and gilding; bronze and gilded
candelabra filled with tapers, stood about
upon consoles; pictures hung on the cheerful
self-coloured green walls.  In one corner
stood a pretty bed, covered with a pea-green
silk quilt, and with a snowy pillow trimmed
with lace. The little room was, if not "parlour,
and kitchen, and all," parlour and bedroom;
but one gets quite used to such arrangements
abroad. And there was the little Signor
himself all smiles, and speaking in his beautiful
Italian, and so honoured by the ladies'
visit. And there was the most ingenious
model of the far-famed Milan Cathedral,
standing on its raised stand of satin-wood on
a table in the centre of the room. It really
was a beautiful model, all of cream-coloured
card-board, and with the tracery of the
windows, the bas-relievos, the capitals of the
columns, the Gothic work of the pinnacles,
the many thousand statues, all moulded in
bread! You saw the painted glass in the
windows, and as the trembling hands of the
clever old Signor removed various portions of
the model, you looked into the interior, and
beheld altars, pictures, gilding, tesselated
pavements. Little, tiny people were walking
about in the church; everything was there,
even to a statue of San Carlo Borromeo himself,
concealed behind the high altar. And
see! the delighted Signor pulls out a drawer