ties and the jests that may be passed on them, in the ready acquiescence of the criminal with inevitable conditions. This part of his nature includes a signal exemption from irritability or angry excitement, and a bland courtesy of obedience that has a strange similarity to a high tone of Christian resignation. So long as he remains free from prison bonds, he of course adopts every alternative for the protection of his freedom. He hides himself; he flees before his enemy the officer of justice; he knocks down his pursuer if that is apparently the sole alternative for the retention of his freedom. But once in prison bonds, all is changed in the direction of gentle submission. It is like the occurrences so often exemplified in books of sensational religion, where the wicked, un scrupulous, dissipated man, having experienced a "call," is at once converted into the meek forgiving saint. What makes the amiability of prison-life so perplexing a phenomenon is, that we know the evil passions to be in existence beneath the gentle exterior. The phenomenon is not mere acting. It has a root much deeper. The passions of hatred and revenge are somehow for the time suspended, and Christian amiability reigns in their stead. There are general conclusions known to all of us that point to the absence of vindictiveness in the criminal nature. Judges, jury men, prosecutors, and prison officers have all been their enemies in bringing them under conditions of suffering and grief. Yet it never crosses the thought of such official persons that society is filled with people of a degraded, unscrupulous nature, nature, who have had occasion to be roused against them by a sense of injury. The litigant who is the suffering party in a civil suit submits of course to his fate with a grumble; but his religious and moral training will at once assure him that he must not attribute evil motives to the hostile judge. We may be assured that reasoning like this never pierces to the mind of the convict. His patient acquiescence -his exemption from all hatred, malice, or uncharitableness to those who have been his. persecutors, make a phenomenon not to be thus accounted for by the moral influences that reign throughout the uncriminal part of the community. It seems to be a result following on a certain torpidity which we shall, ere much more is said, find to be a phenomenon of the criminal nature, and a phenomenon as yet in its sources unsolved. One peculiar, and it may be said interesting, form of this phenomenon in the criminal world, is the abject subjugation of the female to the male. To one happily unacquainted with the inner life of the criminal world there will be a ready cause for this in the brutal and unscrupulous nature of the male offender, subduing and coercing to his will the weaker partner in wickedness. But those who have had opportunities for the accurate study of the criminal nature will not be content with this solution. The phenomenon is, along with others in the same dreary region of human experience, merely to be recognised as a distinct fact, supported by abundant and indubitable evidence. Nor can it be solved on the theory that a united career in crime will give opportunity for enhancing the power naturally exercised by the stronger over the weaker nature. Sometimes, no doubt, it has occurred that the corrupt wife has been the tutor of the husband in the ways of crime; but there can be no question that such an incident is rare in comparison with its converse, in the husband being the leader in the road to ruin. A prison officer, who had arranged many interviews between husband and wife, the one being a prisoner and the other free, was known to give this utterance of his experience in such affairs-that he had known many instances where the man had upbraided his wife as the cause of his career in wickedness, but had never known a single instance of the wife casting such a charge on her husband. most miraculous point. The officer's skill is aided by general regulations, and one is, that no specific thing, however innocent, is to be transferred from the one to the other. Take an example of the necessity for this strictness. The woman, plunged in deep and sonorous grief, dandles an infant in her arms. Becoming excited, she swings the infant wildly about. It has an apple in its hand, and that apple, by a skilful sweep, the infant brings within the reach of its father, and it passes into his hand. The warder instantly seizes it, and finds that it is stuffed with a letter to the prisoner-father. It may be noted that people are much mistaken when they adopt the notion that the visit from wife or daughter is always acceptable. That this idea is entertained is testified by the suspension of such visits being inflicted as a punishment for misconduct in prison. It is believed that criminals often misconduct themselves to gain an end in this form of punishment. It form of punishment. On the other hand, if there be in the criminal any remnant of susceptibility to gentle or virtuous impressions, the visit from mother, wife, or daughter is often the means of giving life to it. The author of these casual and fugitive notices does not profess to be a philosopher with a perfect system of prison discipline in his brain, ready to be communicated to the world whenever the world desires to see it. He will be satisfied if he affords a few morsels of amusement to the casual reader; and in offering them, he does not desire to reveal the conditions under which his experience in prison discipline was obtained. It is, then, in a merely expositive and not a critical spirit that he says what he has to say. He means neither laudation nor blame in noticing that the conditions of interview with a criminal husband are hard on a virtuous wife. They are placed, as it were, in two cages where they can speak to but not touch each other. A warder sits in the space between them, and the poor woman has seldom the happiness of knowing how dead every word passing between them touches his well-practised ear. One intellectual function he must exercise-a vigilant skill directed towards the defeating of any attempt at secret communication. Whatever be his skill in defeating, it may have to meet its match in a skill for trickery, educated up to an al There was a passing intention of conferring on these erratic gleanings, the title "Lights and Shadows of Prison-Life." It occurred, however, as an admonitory objection, that the association of light with prison-life would appear, in its unexplained simplicity, something incongruous, and that it might be well to reserve it for a place where some explanation could be given of the nature of such lights. Their nature is embodied not so much in brightness as in serenity. Even this requires explanation, and here it comes. It may not be said that to any one there is positive happiness in prison-life, but to the habitual criminal it is frequently the portion of his life that has least unhappiness in it-the unhappiness caused by terrors that seldom cease to haunt, and by occasional visitations of starvation and other physical forms of hardships. Long as they may for freedom, there is to this class an obvious serenity in prison-life. The terrible responsibilities that may follow on some mistake in the policy of a life full of schemes and dangerous projects, are unknown for a time. The deteriorating influence of orgies destructive to the vital powers is suspended. The food is simple and wholesome, and after a time the prison-bird feeds on it with satisfaction. The dinner is seized and devoured with so much avidity that the warder in charge of it feels that it would be personally dangerous to withdraw or delay it: there is a feeling in the class that a convict would commit murder to secure his dinner if it were in danger. It is true that there is a depressing influence in long sentences, but this is counteracted by abundant and nourishing diet; so that the accidental onlooker from the outer world is scandalised by the sight of the petty offender feeding on porridge, while the great criminal enjoys an ample The heart that melts for others' woe people taken from the ordinary world, there would be slight sounds arising from nightmare following on indigestion-perhaps from some reminiscence troubling the conscience on the question whether the strong steps taken for payment of that bill were not in the circumstances slightly harsh, or some other disturbing recollection; there might also be uneasy thoughts and dreams creative of restlessness. None of these troubles disturb the sleep of the habitual criminal. This is not because his conscience lies easy on him, but because he does not possess the article known to the rest of the world as a conscience. Hence he neither enjoys the satisfaction of its healthy and genial condition, nor the troubles attending on its inflictions, and it is with him essentially that the "Prayer for Indifference," by Greville, as it may be found in the old Elegant Extracts,' is granted. meal of butcher-meat. There is something very solemn in a large convict-prison at midnight. A faint sound of healthy slumber comes from the cells where the convicts sleep. Perhaps there are a thousand, perhaps only five hundred, undergoing punishment; but whatever may be the number, one is conscious that nowhere else save in a convict-prison could so many human beings sleep with so little to interrupt the sense of calm repose. In the same number of "Oh haste to shed the sacred balm My shattered nerves new string; At her approach see hope, see fear, And disappointment in the rear That blasts the promised joy. The tear which pity taught to flow Shall then scarce feel its own. The wounds which now each moment bleed, Each moment then shall close, And tranquil days shall still succeed To nights of calm repose." It is only to the hardened and habitual offender, however, that there is serenity in prison - life. To the man whose weak apparatus of moral restraint has been insufficient to overcome the temptations of gain, and who has been detected in a forgery or some other fraud, the entrance at the prison-gate is an announcement to him in terrible and appalling reality of the warning of Dante, that all hope is left behind-that for him in this world it is dead and buried. And here we touch one of the points where there arises a sense of the extreme difficulty of measuring punishment against the weight of crime, and are reminded that we are generally driven to the alternative of inflicting not what is abstractly just, but what is most likely to protect the world from fraud and injury. Yet there are some considerations inclining to the alternative that the punishment of the man who has lapsed from virtue and respectability should, if nominally light, lie more heavily upon him than that of the habitual offender hardened to prison-life. Let us see how in the general case he comes to be what he is. Pedigree is reputed to be an attribute of aristocratic position; but if it is not the mere ordering of stars and garters, but the stamp of certain qualities on races of living beings, we must go to the races of the lower criminals to find its fullest development. As intermediate between these two classes of pedigree, comes to the person familiar with prison populations, the pedigree of crime; and it may perhaps some day be seen that note is taken of the descendants of thieves, and of the qualities developed by them, as we follow the descendants of the lower animals in The Short-horned Book,' and other manuals of that kind of lore. There is no attempt here to develop any philosophy of criminal descent by pedigree, but the fact of its existence is well known to every one whose lot it has been to come in contact with criminals. Beyond the bare fact nothing seems as yet to be seen that would lead to a closer knowledge of the whole affair as a psychological phenomenon. And indeed incidents have occurred suggesting that the hereditary taint may be latent in a race not notorious for crime. Even in those unexpected instances already referred to, where a man has stepped out of respectability to inhabit a felon's prison, the curiosity of the inquiring world, excited by the strangeness of the event, is gratified by the discovery of ancestral stains of criminality. There was recently an instance of a lapse into crime on the part of a gentle, kindly, inoffensive man whose immediate relations were clergymen, or members of the other decorous professions; yet it was found that he had a grand-uncle who had been hanged. There was another curious little incident of coincidence in the case of this man connecting him with perhaps the best account to be found in print of the experiences of one who has lapsed from the respectable into the criminal classes: 'Five Years' Penal Servitude. By One who has Endured It.' The author of this book begins by stating "It matters little to the public what it was that brought me within the grip of my country's laws: suffice it to say, after over twenty years of commercial life in more than one large English city, I found myself, in the year 186-, drawn into the meshes of a man who was too clever for me and for the law, and who, crossing the seas to a place of safety, left me to meet a charge to which, in his absence, I had really no defence."-P. 3. The persons who thus lapse from external respectability into crime have generally something like an apology to state, the habitual criminal knows that to be useless. It happened that in the instance above referred to, the apology corresponded precisely with that of the author of 'Five Years' Penal Servitude.' It was hence inferred that he must have been the author of that book, but that was contradicted by the fact that he had not to pass through the prisons so well described by the author of the Five Years.' There is something characteristic in the excuse or apology set forth by the five years' man in this, that it does not assert absolute innocence; and this calls up to recollection the conduct of habitual criminals in their intercourse with inspectors and other persons superintending the administration of prison discipline. The ears of these officers are open to any complaints that may be made to them, but it is notorious that they rarely if ever are told by the convict that he is innocent of the crime for which he is undergoing punishment. If a reason is given by him why sentence should not have been passed on him, it is founded on some legal technicality which his ingenuity has suggested to him. No better reason can be given for this than the supposition in the criminal mind, that the official mind will listen to a story about a technical error, but not to an assertion of innocence. It has been noted that serenity and a sense of relief in a prison is more likely to be the lot of its habitual than of its casual inmates. But it may be, and in fact is, occasionally known to occur, that the person who has lapsed from a position among his neighbours, recognised as respectable, into punishable crime, may also enjoy with the habitual criminal a sense of peace and gloomy repose when he takes his place in the cells for convicted prisoners. His life may have been for any number of years a succession of dexterous and narrow escapes from the grip of the criminal law. The most familiar to us among cases of this kind is in a succession of forged bills, each retired by the discounting of its successor. It has been whispered in some of these instances that some of the knowing persons through whose hands the forged documents passed in the banks knew what they were, and kept silence. Money was circulated, and trade encouraged, while there was ever the comforting assurance, "Thou canst not say I did it." But, on the other hand, the supposition that such things may be is probably a calumny. All who, under any circumstances, spend their time within the walls of a prison, undergo a process of assimilation towards a scepticism as to the capacity of poor human nature for real goodness. Before losing sight of the hereditary character of crime, it is proper to say that it has been recognised, examined, and commented on, not only by ethical philosophers, but by men of practical understanding, holding high administrative offices. But all has been fruitless, so far as definite practical conclusions go. Let us here, as in so many other human difficulties, hope to see a better day dawning on us as the result of earnest and candid inquiry. The following passage from a writer who had opportunities of acquiring knowledge on the point may be of interest, if merely from the haze of mystery that envelops all clear insight into causes and effects, accompanied with the consciousness that there is mischief of a formidable kind at work, for which a remedy is surely possible: |