of diminishing the maximum, and where more advantageously than in the criminal himself? If the motives which govern the world at large, and operate upon men in ordinary life, to make them frugal and industrious, and to keep them honest, can be brought to bear upon the isolated community of a jail, why should they not? The object is humane; not injurious, but, on the contrary, highly beneficial to society; and not opposed to any established rule of law or general policy. We can conceive no possible argument against it, save that which we have already noticed, and, we trust, satisfactorily.

It is worthy of notice, as being calculated to satisfy the scruples of those who may be alarmed at the introduction of what they imagine a novel principle into our criminal jurisprudence, that this, the main feature of the Mark System, is not new. It is sanctioned by long usage in our penal settlements. In the Australian colonies, a man under sentence of transportation for years or for life may, by his own conduct, both shorten the duration and mitigate the severity of his punishment. By industry, by a peaceable demeanour, by the exercise of skill and ingenuity acquired in better times, he may obtain advantages which are not accorded to others. By a steady continuance in such behaviour, he may acquire the privilege of working for himself, and enjoying the produce of his labour. In the end, he may even be rewarded by a free pardon. If all these things may be done in Australia, why not also in England? Surely there is more to be said on behalf of convicts sentenced to imprisonment than for those sentenced to transportation. If our sympathy, or, to speak more correctly, our mercy, is to be inversely to the enormity of the offence, then the English prisoner is most entitled to our regard. It is possible that the transportation system may be wrong, but, at least, let us be consistent.

It is not necessary that Captain Maconochie's plan should be adopted in extenso, to the immediate and active subversion of the ancient system. We may feel our way. There is no reason why a single prison should not be set art, or, if necessary, specially con

structed, for the purpose of applying the test of practice to the new theory. A short act might be passed, empowering the judges to inflict labour instead of time-sentences-of course, within a certain limit as to number. Captain Maconochie himself might be entrusted with the superintendence of the experiment, in order to avoid the possibility of a suspicion that it had not received a fair trial. If, with every reasonable advantage, the scheme should eventually prove impracticable, then, of course, it will sink into oblivion, and be consigned to the limbo of impossible theories. The country will have sustained no loss, save the insignificant expense of the model machinery.

Considering the whole subject-its importance, its difficulty, the novelty of the proposed amendments, and their magnitude-we are disposed to agree with the learned Recorder of Birmingham, that "the plan is highly deserving of notice." Objections, of course, might be made in abundance, over and above those we have thought proper to notice. These, however, may be all reduced to one, namely, that the scheme is impracticable. That it may prove so, we do not deny ; nor could any one, with a grain of prudence, venture to deny it, seeing how many promising projects are daily failing, not through their own intrinsic defects, but through miscalculation of opposing forces. The test of the Mark System, we repeat, must be experience. All that we seek to establish in its favour is the soundness of its principles. Of these we do not hesitate to avow a perfect approval; and, in doing so, we do not fear being classed among the disciples of the new school of pseudo- philanthropy, whose academy is Exeter Hall, and whose teachers are such men as Lord Nugent and Mr Fox. It is quite possible to feel compassion for the guilty, and a solicitude for their temporal as well as eternal welfare, without elevating them into the dignity of martyrs, and fixing one's attention upon them, to the neglect of their more honest and less protected neighbours. It is no uncommon thing to hear comparisons drawn between the conditions of the prisoner and the pauper-between the abundant nou

rishing food of the former, and the scanty meagre rations of the latter! There is no doubt that better fare is provided in a jail than in a workhouse. Good reasons, perhaps, may be given for the distinction, but in appearance it is horribly unjust. No system which proposed to encourage it would ever receive our approbation. The Mark System is adverse to the pampering of criminals. It seeks to enforce temperance and frugality, both by positive rewards, and by punishing gluttony and indulgence. Its object is the improvement, not of the physical, but the moral condition of the prisoner. His mind, not his body, is

its especial care-a prudent, humane, we will even say, a pious care! Visionary it may be, though we think not— absurd it can never be, except in the eyes of those to whom the well-being of their fellow-creatures is matter of indifference, and who, too frivolous to reflect, or too shallow to penetrate the depths of things, seek to disguise their ignorance and folly under cover of ridicule. To such we make no appeal. But to the many really humane and sensible persons who are alive to the importance of the subject, we recommend a deliberate examination of the Mark System.

M.

NEVER was there such a summer on this side of the Tropics. How is it possible to exist, with the thermometer up to boiling point! London a vast caldron-the few people left in its habitable parts strongly resembling stewed fish-the aristocratic portion of the world flying in all directions, though there are three horticultural fetes to come-the attachés to all the foreign embassies sending in their resignations, rather than be roasted alive-the ambassadors all on leave, in the direction of the North Polc-the new governor of Canada congratulated, for the first time in national history, on his banishment to a land where he has nine months winter;-and a contract just entered into with the Wenham Lake Company for ten thousand tons of ice, to rescue the metropolis from a general conflagration.

-Went to dine with the new East India Director, in his Putney paradise. Sir Charles gives dinners worthy of the Mogul, and he wants nothing of the pomps and pleasures of the East but a harem. But, in the mean time, he gathers round him a sort of human menagerie; and every race of man, from the Hottentot to the Highlander, is to be found feeding in his Louis Quatorze saloons.

This certainly variegates the scene considerably, and relieves us of the

intolerable topics, of Parliament, taxes, the last attempt on Louis Philippe, the last adventure of Queen Christina, or the last good thing of the last great bore of Belgrave Square; with the other desperate expedients to avoid the inevitable yawn. We had an Esquimaux chief, who, however, dwelt too long on the luxury of porpoise steaks; a little plump Mandarin, who indulged us with the tricks of the tea trade; the sheik Ben Hassan Ben Ali, who had narrowly escaped hanging by the hands of the French; and a New Zealand chief, strongly suspected of habits inconsistent with the European cuisine, yet who restricted himself on this occasion to every thing at the table.

At length, in a pause of the conversation, somebody asked where somebody else was going, for the dogdays. The question engaged us all. But, on comparing notes, every Englishman of the party had been every where already- Cairo, Constantinople, Calcutta, Cape Horn. There was not a corner of the world, where they had not drunk tea, smoked cigars, and anathematised the country, the climate, and the constitution. Every thing was usé-every soul was blasé. There was no hope of novelty, except by an Artesian perforation to the centre, or a voyage to the

moon.

At last a curious old personage, with a nondescript visage, and who might, from the jargon of his tongue and the mystery of his costume, have been a lineal descendant of the Wandering Jew, asked, had any one at table seen the Thames?

The question struck us all at once. It was a grand discovery; it was a flash of light; it was the birth of a new idea; it was an influx of brilliant inquiry. It was ascertained, that though we had all steamed up and down the Thames times without number, not one of us had seen the river. Some had always steamed it in their sleep; some had plunged at once into the cabin, to avoid the passengers on deck; some had escaped the vision by the clouds of a cigar; some by a French novel and an English dinner. But not one could recollect any thing more of it than it flowed through banks more or less miry; that it was, to the best of their recollection, something larger than the Regent's Canal; and some thought that they had seen occasional masts and smoke flying by them.

My mind was made up on the spot. Novelty is my original passion-the spring of all my virtues and vices the stimulant of all my desires, disasters, and distinctions. In short, I determined to see the Thames.

Rose at daybreak-the sky blue, the wind fragrant, Putney throwing up its first faint smokes; the villa all asleep. Leaving a billet for Sir Charles, I ordered my cab, and set off for the Thames. "How little," says Jonathan Swift, "does one-half of the world know what the other is doing." I had left Putney the abode of silence, a solitary policeman standing here and there, like the stork which our modern painters regularly put into the corner of their landscapes to express the sublime of solitude-no slipshod housemaid peeping from her window; no sight or sound of life to be seen through the rows of the flower-pots, or the lattices of the suburb gardens.

But, once in London, what a contrast. From the foot of London bridge what a rush of life; what an incursion of cabs; what a rattle of waggons; what a surge of population; what a chaos of clamour; what volcanic volumes of everlasting smoke rolling up against the unhappy face of the Adelaide hotel; what rushing of porters, and trundling of trunks; what cries of every species, utterable by that extraordinary machine the throat of man; what solicitations to trust myself, for instant conveyance to the remotest shore of the terraqueous globe!" For Calais, sir? Boat off in half-an-hour."-"For Constantinople? in a quarter."-" For Alexandria? in five minutes."-" For the Cape? bell just going to ring." In this confusion of tongues it was a thousand to one that I had not jumped into the boat for the Niger, and before I recovered my senses, been far on my way to Timbuctoo.

In a feeling little short of desperation, or of that perplexity in which one labours to decypher the possible purport of a maiden speech, I flung myself into the first steamer which I could reach, and, to my genuine selfcongratulation, found that I was under no compulsion to be carried beyond the mouth of the Thames.

I had now leisure to look round me. The bell had not yet chimed: passengers were dropping in. Carriages were still rolling down to the landingplace, laden with mothers and daughters, lapdogs and bandboxes, innumerable. The surrounding scenery came, as the describers say, "in all its power on my eyes."-St Magnus, built by Sir Christopher Wren, as dingy and massive as if it had been built by Roderic the Goth; St Olave's, rising from its ruins, as fresh as a fairy palace of gingerbread; the Shades, where men drink wine, as Bacchus did, from the bunghole; the Bridge of Bridges, clambered over and crowded with spectators as thick as hiving bees!

But-prose was never made for such things. I must be Pindaric.