THE

PRISON

INQUEST.

BY THE "CLERGY MAN IN

DEBT."

of the world!

All prisons are dreadful, but a debtor's prison is the most dreadful of all. There men who have committed nocrime are criminals, for their punishment is the punishment of the dishonest. The poor man sits down by the side of the swindler, and yet both pay to justice the same retribution. Oh, Goldsmith! you who first sent your pious vicar into the heart of a prison where the debtor and the thief mixed in the same circle; where the horsestealer, prating of the cosmognomy of the world,' spouted his spurious learning to the parson, who was rich in the revelation of the gospel; you, Johnson, who proposed to hunt from society the harsh despoiler of a peaceful home, and to cover with obloquy the man who prevented another from earning the bread with which his children should be fed; why were not your humane doctrines as extensively practised as they were universally read, and your wisdom followed as much as it was loved?

I HAD always a passion for the survey of exter-, forth its hues and fashions in the great kaleidoscope nal and universal nature. I have been a far traveller; my shadow has deepened among the gloomer shades of the forests of the new world, and I have seen it play at evening, lengthened by the moon, over the snow of an Apennine or an Alp; fire-flies have lighted me along my topic path, and the mute stars have shone listening on the oars that rowed my gondola over Venetian waters; the sunny vineyards of Italy-the fair fields of France- the bright radiance of the sparkling sands in the Arabian desert-the brighter pomp of the Indian city-the faded glories of the Alhambraand the embrowned richness of the Spanish grove -on all these have I feasted my sight and soul, gathering up the living beauties of one landscape and the everlasting wonders of another, as food and manna for the worship and adoration of the God who made them all! In the pursuit of nature in other lands, and in the fond contemplation of wonders that lead to piety,' I fancied, as a young man, that I was laying in a store of proper knowledge for the heart, losing myself rashly, but perhaps pardonably, in the loveliness of the natural world, and forgetting that my very calling, MAN, in the image of his Maker, should have been my study-not as he is studied by the physicians, for his bodily advantage-but in the pulses of his heartin the promptings of his spirit-in the fiery impetus of his passions-the milder suggestions of his reason-and the busy workings of his brain! that I should watch all in short-not severely, but in all benevolence-for the sake of the salvation of a

few!

It is a confession that may not perhaps tell much to my advantage, that this truth first flashed upon me within the walls of a prison-that it was when I had been merged as it were into the pressing difficulties of poverty, and learned how hard a thing it is to want'-when I had seen man fallen more in credit than humanity—a father wondering how his children should live-a mother dreading lest they should die :-yes, it was when I had seen different ages-different grades-different degrees of poverty, of sorrow and of shame-that I began for the first time to feel that I should centre and concentrate all my energies in the study of the huinan mind:

"That vast unbounded thing,

That liveth in no space!
That hath a soul upon its wing!
A glory in its face!"

In a prison! Yes, reader in a dangerous and detestable prison, I, as a young man, fond of truth -fond of philosophy-fond of religion-gained an insight into the human heart-saw it in its various shades and phasis-like a many-colored glass, that being broken in a thousand pieces, was shaping

Well-a-day! but it was in a jail that my poor experience of what man is capable of enduring, both bodily and mentally, has been gained and garnered.

Towards the end of summer, or rather the beginning of autumn, in the last year I was a pri soner in the king's bench. My incarceration took its rise out of a bill which I had signed for a friend; the amount was considerable; he had not paid it; I could not; he gained time; I a prisoner! Upon me imprisonment would have pressed sadly and severely, but for my occupation; in the field before me the duties of a clergyman overcame the selfishness of the man. Labor omnia vincit; and what I had to perform conquered what I had to bear! Sometimes I had to cheer the honest; sometimes to endeavor to reform the unworthy; often to administer consolation to affliction; oftener to reprove the levity of youth; more than once too, I waited and watched by the bed of sickness, and registered in my own heart the last pray of men whose spirits, as I hoped, were fleeting above sor

row and

"Beyond the reach of sin." Well might I exclaim with Byron, "Oh, God it is a fearful thing To see the human soul take wing In any shape-in any mood."

And add to this,

"I've seen it rushing forth in blood;
I've seen it on the breaking ocean
Strive with a swoln convulsive motion."

And then,

"I've seen the sick and ghastly bed
Of sin, delirious with its dread."

This, reader, is the worst of all; and this was what I saw, and sorrowed over, in a debtor's jail.

I have said that I had a passion for the study of external nature. It was a bright night, and towards the end of August, that I left my dreary and desolate chamber to imbibe the air of heaven upon the racquet-ground within the walls of the King's Bench. I knew that the leaves had fallen from the trees, although I could not roam upon the paths where they were scattered. Neither woods or waters, cities nor fields, were before me or around me, or on either side, but above-yes, above me, there was a glorious and cloudless heaven, radiant with moonlight, and studded with stars, and upon that I could gaze, and wonder, and rejoice; gaze on the great glory of Providence; wonder at the marvelousness of its mystery, and rejoice in those shining emblems of its mercy and its love! I began to speculate, not less upon the promises and marvels which I fancied I saw recorded in the sky, than upon those bright figures and parables in revelation, each in itself as much a beacon to the human spirit as particular stars are signals to the mariner upon the deep! And I am not the only one who has drawn a moral from the stars within a prison's walls-De Berenger watched them in France, through his grated bars.

Ay, now, reflected I, in the words of the French lyrist,

"And now, what other star is that,

That shoots, and shoots, and disappears ?" Perhaps it is emblematic of some poor fellow, who, even to-day, may have been taken from a bright station in society to be thrust into this gloomy jail, or perhaps it is indeed, a type of death, and "un mortel expire!!"

It was a quiet autumn night, I had ventured out, because I found a greater stillness prevailed than was usual within the walls of the prison; the hour was late, and I must have been perambulating a "weary while," from one end to the other of the racquet-ground and back, when a shooting star called to my mind the fanciful supposition of Berenger's "un mortel expire." "If so be that a mortal dies," said I musingly, "peace follow him to the grave."

without a sacrament!" and she bounded away from me with the speed of despair.

Her words brought me to my senses, and I soon arrested her progress. "Stop, stop," said I, "is your husband really dying?"

"I fear so."

"Is he a catholic?"

No, no,

I am a catholie, but my poor William is a protestant. Och, for God's sake, come and save his soul! come," said she, "come."

I followed her up two flights of stone steps in The door of her room, as she opened it, creaked one of the front staircases in the King's Bench. gently on its hinges, and was answered by a quiet groan.

Hush," whispered she, as if in addressing the patient, she were drowing the noise of the door; "hush, dear William, are ye in pain?” live; don't cry now, Ellen, you've been a kind "No, I'm in no pain now, but I hav'nt long to creature to me, and be sure I'll love ye to the last." "Papa's not well," lisped a child who lay dreaming on the floor in one corner of the apart ment. I tapped gently at the door.

"Come in, sir; och, come in for the love of God!" sobbed the distracted wife.

I entered; the husband, exhausted with the few words he had spoken, dozed half insensibly, and I sat myself down by his bed.

"He had better not be disturbed," whispered I. 'No, sir, not now," said the wife; "but the docther 'll be here directly, and afther he's done wid him, ye'd better talk to him, sir. Nothing can save him now."

I continued sitting by the bed; and in the interval which elapsed before the doctor's arrival, I took note of the interior of the room. Like all the apartments of the prison, it was small in its dimen sions, about twelve feet square; the walls were green, here and there darkened with a spot of damp; there was no carpet on the floor, and either the fire was extinguished, or the embers were the wreck of some former day's warmth. A rushlight, twisted round with paper, and stuck in a bottlethere was no candlestick-threw a faint sad flicker over the chamber, like a meteor through mist, shedding mingled light and gloom. The bed on which the patient lay was of French make, but its curtains had long been pledged for food; the counSeveral times, I continued to pace backwards terpane was gone too, and the upper sheet, so that and forwards, dreaming awake, as it were, of the dingy and worn blankets were the invalid's death, its fit preparation, and its appalling pre- only covering. In one corner of the room, upon a scnce. Men often familiarise with the lips a sen- matrass on the floor, lay two children—a boy and tence, that has struck suddenly upon the mind, and girl; the girl, about eight years of age, slept sound. I, as I strode over the prison ground, in thought, | ly; the boy, younger by three years of age, had kept repeating to myself the words which the just awakened, and seeing a stranger in the room, shooting star had awakened in my memory, "un lay with his bright blue eyes fixed upon my figure mortel expire, un mortel expire." in a wide exquisite stare. The eldest daughter of the dying man, a pretty, slim girl, some three years older than either of the other children, nursed an infant by the window, while the mother stood near the foot of the invalid's bed, and watched his pale lips as he lay breathing away the last moments of his life.

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My husband is dying," cried a woman who had approached me unnoticed, and laid her hand upon my arm, for God's sake, come; come and administer to him the last consolations of religion!"

“Un mortel expire: there is a man dying,” said I, almost mechanically, surprised in the very tenor of my thought; "Heaven save his soul."

"Holy virgin!" exclaimed the woman, "the clergyman is mad, and my poor husband 'll die

For about ten minutes after I had sat down by the bed-side, there was a silent stillness in the room. The man continued dozing, and the poor wife, who seemed to fancy that in that short sleep

her husband's suffering was lulled, controlled her [ing at the foot of the bed, (on it,) and the child, as sobs and tears in her intense anxiety that he should rest peacefully.

all children are taught, closed together the palms of its little hands, and held them up towards heaven. A gentle opening of the door, and a repetition The wife herself knelt down by the bed, with one of the same slight creak which I before noticed, daughter on each side of her, and the doctor raised announced the arrival of the doctor, but the patient his hat from his head, and held it over his face.did not move. The medical attendant stood as he With a tone as solemn as I could command, I comhad entered, and the wife did not change her ear-menced the sacred duty which I had to perform, nest listening posture; she stood like a frail vessel with a short, but earnest exhortation to the dying between the Scylla and Charybdis of human des- man. I then chose from the service a few of those tiny-her own heart vibrating betwixt hope and passages which I thought would apply consolingly. fear. The patient too, dozed in a sort of doubt; "Godliness is great riches, if a man be content whether he should wake to woo the fair spirit of with that he hath ; for we brought nothing into the existence, or sleep on, till he became united with world, neither may we carry any thing out.”—1 the darker angel of death. So pondered the Lord Tim. vi. Thomas of the olden ballad between his two brides!

There were one or two sentences which I avoided, fearful of raising in his mind an angry feeling towards those who had imprisoned him. Such as -"Whoso hath this world's goods, and seeth his brother in need, and shutteth up his compassion from him, how dwelleth the love of God in him?”

For about two minutes, this sort of awful quiet prevailed in the room; it was interrupted, and the prisoner awakened, by the faint cry of the child whom his eldest daughter was nursing. The patient, who evidently had been dreaming, seeing me-1 St. John, iii. as he awoke, suddenly started and inquired, "Are you the man?"

"Whatman, William, dear? who do you mean?" said the wife, bending over him; "this is our good clergyman, and as you were ill, I thought you might like to talk to him."

"Thank you, Ellen," said the prisoner faintly, "I thought it was your"

"What, William?" asked the wife, gaspingly, as if fearful of what was coming.

"Oh, I must have been dreaming, dear," was the evasive answer. "Ellen, did you not say this gentleman was a clergyman?"

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During the time I went through the service, there was not the slightest interruption; from the unsleeping smiling infant by the sufferer's side, to the agonized mother by his bed, all were mute listen ers; and when the sacrament was administered, the prisoner took the bread, and drank of the wine, with the fervent earnestness of a christian, who put all his trust in God, and who hoped to be redeemed by his Son!

When it was all over, he seemed much comforted, but his serenity was suddenly disturbed, and by an incident the most affecting I ever beheld. His little boy, who had remained with his hands

Yes, and happy if he can afford you consola- clasped in most lamb-like innocence, at the foot of tion in your sad illness," rejoined I.

"Ellen, dear," resumed he, "I should like to take the sacrament! will you receive it with me?" "I am a catholic, William," said the wife, with a faint smile.

"Ah! I forgot; then, sir, I will take it alone," said he, turning to me; “but, Ellen, bring our children to my bed side, and do you sit by me; I would have you all see that I trusted in Christ to the last." The woman turned away her head; the tears rolled rapidly over her cheeks, and she for a moment hid her face in her handkerchief. Then she bent over the matrass on which her children lay, and the little boy smiled, and asked, "What is it, mother?"

The poor woman now uttered a sob, and the girl awoke. She then motioned her to approach with the infant.

The girl advanced. The doctor sat himself in her vacant chair. The prisoner watched me as I opened a small pocket prayer book; moved towards the cupboard for the fragment of bread upon its shelf, poured into a glass some wine which had been sent to him medicinally, and consecrated both in the customary solemn manner.

During this time the mother had taken the infant from her daughter's hands, and laid it by the side of its father. She had placed the young boy kneel

his bed, as if glad to be released from his cramped position, let fall his arms upon the couch, and crawling over to his father, kissed him on the cheek, and asked, "Father, are you going to die ?” The poor man pressed the boy to his bosom, and sobbed out " Yes!"

The effect was electric; the young, half-conscious child burst into tears-the mother buried her face in the bed-clothes-the younger girl ran to her matrass on the floor, and flung herself upon it in hysteric grief. I found my own fortitude failing, and the doctor, unable to control his emotions, ran out of the room.

I followed hastily, and called him back. "What can you do for him?" said I.

"Nothing! he is dying gradually, and is beyond the reach of medicine. I would help him ifI could, but he is your patient now, not mine, and such scenes I cannot stand."

The words had scarcely passed his lips, when a clap of thunder, the loudest I ever heard in this country, burst over the prison, and went roaring round the walls with the strange strong echoes which they return to all loud sounds. A shriek followed, and we both ran back into the room. Wild fulfilment of a fearful destiny! Strange closing of a sad career! The prisoner was in loud, strong screaming hysterics. The wife snatched the children from the bed, and laid them on the ground, and they all huddled together upon the inatrass, in silent but deep terror.

"Oh, dear! Oh, mercy! Its all me," cried the

woman, despairingly, as she hurried to the water the cause of the prisoner's hysteric shock, and it jug, for the usual remedy for hysterics.

ness once indulged; flowers of affection which it houses facing the sea, bade her farewell and prowas the duty of constancy to keep in bloom.

"Dai bei rami scendea,
Dolce ne la memoria."

ceeded to Gravesend, there to embark on board his own ship for a tropic clime.

Strangely indeed runs the current of human destiny. Poor Ellen was now alone in the world ; left as no other young and attractive child of nature was ever, perhaps, forsaken in her inexperi

absence; her heart was too often artlessly—and, as she believed, almost innocently-wandering after her early love: but she found herself desolate,-a flower with no shelter from the storm,—a reed that might be shaken in the wind.

Soon after Moystyn's departure, an accession of fortune accrued to Ellen and her parent. A relative in England had died and left between father and daughter a neat independent income; where-ence before. She felt no grief for her husband's upon the pride of old Maurice became mightily raised, and he sold off his old clothes, packed up his traps, and with characteristic patriotism, left his country the moment he found himself in a condition to live comfortably in it. Away he started in the first steamer, without bothering himself to For the first few days after her husband's deparbid good-b'ye to his friends; and having passed ture, she whiled away her time in watching, from the ordeal of a rough sea and a longish journey the window of her apartment, the vessels that were through Holyhead, etc., (every Irishman knows continually passing the bay. It was an occupation the rough,) he found himself, one fine evening, that more than any other filled her mind with just in time to dine with his daughter at the Swan-thoughts in which she ought not to have indulged, with-two-Necks in Lad lane.

Once in London, old Maurice set himself down in peace, as he said, to enjoy his prosperity; and, having nothing else to do, he thought of busying himself in finding a husband for Ellen, whom he now considered an heiress. The first requisite for his daughter's spouse, in his idea, would be money, -the next, a sociable power of companionship; in short, a person who had wherewith to pay for his grog, the will to drink,—and the wit to relish it in the evening conversations with old Maurice. Maurice had brought with him an introduction to a person who was to him described as a respectable merchant,' residing in the borough of Southwark, and by name Mr. Wentworth Stokes. This Mr. Wentworth Stokes was a gentleman who might have said to his forty-ninth year, what Kennedy the poet said to the year 1833

but it seemed thrown in her way, and she could not resist. Often it awakened tears for the love and memory of a being for whom they should no longer have dared to flow. One morning after a fitful night, in which poor Ellen's dreams had been hardly less stormy than the bellowing waves that ever and anon wakened her as they dashed under the windows, the lonely and unhappy girl approached her casement and gazed upon the ocean before her raging like an angry lion, with a sudden and mysterious foreboding that those turbulent billows had been working out a passage in her destiny, and were by some wild agency commingled with her future fate. As she cast her eyes over the waters, all unstilled as they tossed, and even bristling with the white foam, she saw numerous vestiges of wreck; and knew that more than one noble fabric of human industry had been shattered, and that many lives must have been lost. One vessel had been within sight totally wrecked, and boats of It was near Christmas, and Mr. Stokes was fifty! a view of rendering assistance while there was such as dared venture were now putting off with So much for his age; in other respects he was such yet a chance. But, with the exception of one pera man as Maurice wanted for his daughter. He son who had been brought on shore, all the crew of said he had money; he proved he had a pleasant, that vessel had perished. Ellen's curiosity now plausible tongue; and all that Christmas he drank prompted her to inquire the name of the ship that gin and water with old Maurice during the long had been so totally destroyed. The answer was, evenings. Poor Ellen! as her heart was not much that it was the ELLEN;' all the crew were drowndengaged in these proceedings, I have not forced ed along with the owner; the captain was the only her to make a frequent personal appearance; but when New-Year's-day came, she was united in the not hear the rest: her wild delirious sensations person saved,-he was at the -. But Ellen did bands of matrimony to Mr. Wentworth Stokes, in overpowered her, and she fainted away. Her preSt. George's church in the borough first, and after- sentiment was surely fulfilled-She was a wiwards by a priest of her own religion.

"Thou art gone, old year, to thy fathers, In the stormy time of snow."

dow!'

Almost immediately after her marriage, her father died; and Mr. Wentworth Stokes, having the captain of her husband's ship, who was at the As soon as they had recovered her, she sent for at his disposal the property both of parent and neighboring inn, and who, on learning that she child, and being, as before described, a respect- was the owner's wife, immediately attended her able merchant, immediately applied it to the pur- summons. pose of freighting a ship to the West Indies, of which he determined to be supercargo himself. Either there must have been something wrong in Mr. Stokes' character, or else a merchant of fifty feels less compunction in leaving a newly-married bride than would a young high-born gentleman. Certain it is, that, as soon as he had engaged an active and intelligent captain to take charge of his vessel, he conveyed Mrs. Stokes to Herne Bay, and having procured her a first floor in a row of

heard at the door; a strange foreboding tremor A few minutes and his knock was prevaded her frame as he ascended the stairs. The door opened,—Ellen raised her eyes and started to see before her the figure of WILLIAM MOYSTYN!

William Moystyn and Ellen had been married some years, meeting with occasional reverses, but industriously working their way through the world.