the ends of justice nor to the prisoner's health and happiness that he should indulge in such luxurious superfluities as he may have addicted himself to in the days of his freedom. The stoppage of his wine is of course a serious element in his punishment, and so is the wearing of the convict uniform. But it is clean, like everything else about him; and the consideration of exempting him from any rules of prison discipline must be considered in its influence on his fellow-prisoners of humbler condition.

Liberal efforts have been made in recent times to distribute clergymen and lay teachers through our prisons. It is one of those works to which people bid God-speed without too closely criticising the extent of its efficiency. The tolerant and pliant nature of the habitual criminal prompts him to manifestations of acceptance apt to mislead the teacher especially the religious teacher-as to the practical extent of his services. It is, unfortunately, a notion familiar to all to whom prison life is familiar, that a fresh chaplain is delighted to find that the spiritual harvest to be reaped is now spread before him. He will not perhaps announce the blasting of his hopes; but it is a common opinion among those acquainted with prison interiors, that there is perhaps no officer within the walls 'more thoroughly sceptical of any moral or religious good having been effected among the flock than the prison chaplain. The members of his congregation will remember the words uttered by him, and will perhaps repeat them to others in a manner not tending to edification; as where an eminent statesman questioning a prisoner about to be released as to his intentions for the future, was

answered, "I am to sell all I have and give unto the poor." Still it would be a dreary conclusion to reach that no good results come from the costly efforts to plant teachers of religion among the inmates of prisons, and it must at least be believed that it is good to bring them into contact with people of earnestly religious views and high culture.

In the way of other methods of bringing such influences to operate on the criminal nature there are difficulties. A prison is a place where precision and order are the rule. All exciting novelties are a source of intense anxiety and great trouble to the discipline officers, whose services, even when they are supported and encouraged, are not of a kind to be cheerful or enjoyable. Yet it would not be wise, or consistent with British notions of the sacredness of personal liberty, that none but the officers of a prison should have access to it, and opportunity of communication with its criminal inhabitants. Reference has been made to that instinct of the jail-bird that warns him against any attempt to plead innocence of the offence attributed to him, and induces him to found his complaint of the injustice done to him on some technical irregularity. But this weakness loses its restraint in the presence of the benevolent stranger, who is often perplexed and vexed by the heavy burden laid upon him in the distinct and fervent declaration of perfect innocence made by every inmate of a prison who has had an opportunity of appealing to him.

Chaplains and teachers are, to a certain extent, a wholesome element of influence on the pedantries and conventionalities of the officers trained to monotonous daily duties; and other visitors are received un

der certain conditions in conform ity with the established routine of discipline. If they generally conform with these, and consent to visit the establishment, not as a show, but as a sphere of useful labour, they do an eminent service to the public.

There has been of late years a gradual but wholesome pressure against the practice of making any inmate of a prison a public show on account of the atrocity or some other exciting quality in the crime for which the imprisonment has been inflicted. The love of fame is powerfully at work in the criminal mind; and it is not an entirely preposterous conclusion, on the part of people who have had opportunities for observation, that the homage of curiosity paid by the foolish public to the martyr undergoing punishment for some flagrant crime has been an element of temptation to others to attempt the accomplishment of the like. A certain grade of rank, in fact, in the criminal world, is conceded to the perpetrators of crimes of a high and startling character. Vidocq, the illustrious French policeman, gives more distinction to this peculiarity than it is perhaps entitled to claim with us; and among the inmates of a prison he gives a lively account of the miseries of a poor creature, whose crime was limited to the theft of certain cabbages, under the sneers of a high-class convict, whose plunderings had been among diamonds and other precious articles. It seemed, however, to persons experienced in prison-work, an unexpected novelty when a body of men, under sentences of penal servitude, complained of the humiliation of occupying the same premises with petty offenders sentenced to short periods of imprisonment. They

VOL. CXXX.-NO. DCCLXXXIX.

claimed for themselves, as the "Secretary of State's convicts," something like a position of exclusive dignity.

Convicts are signally susceptible to those emotions that are sometimes spoken of as the amiable defects of human nature. A prominent place among these is vanity. Personal vanity is naturally more conspicuous among the women than on the male side. Some of them will appropriate and adorn themselves with any strip of ribbon, silk, or even tinfoil, that may happen to be found; and there is an unaccountable oddity in the exercise of the passion, since it must be done in secret, and especially since it is precluded from attracting the attention of any male admirer.

The susceptibility of the criminal to the influence of vanity sometimes takes a troublesome shape in efforts to deceive or mystify his custodiers. The steady perseverance and long endurance of misery often expended in the gratification of this passion, is one of the standing marvels of prison-life. "Malingering," or feigning sickness, is the most ordinary form taken by the passion, and, with the other vanities, it prevails on the female side. Instances could be recalled of women keeping themselves bedridden for years to this end. In one instance the poor patient was enabled, by a peculiar muscular power, to create the external symptoms of a dangerous structural disease. A surgeon celebrated for successful operations on such maladies was called in. His first act was to administer chloroform, and this deprived the malingerer of the physical capacity to create the phenomenon. This woman was an instance of the elements of profuse health and strength, often the gift of criminals. After having lain

for several years an abject wasted wretch, when restored to the discipline and hard work of the healthy, she gained weight and colour, and all the elements of an excellent constitution.

In another instance, the convict betrayed herself by an imprudent exercise of the virtue of cleanliness. Criminals, while in their own hands, are generally dirty in their habits; and the personal cleanliness enforced under good prison discipline is one of its most effective hardships. In this instance, however, there was the innate love of cleanness peculiar to the respectable Englishwoman. The keeping of this woman's cell in order had to be performed by some one of her comrades in affliction. It was observed, however, that it was always in a more perfectly clean condition in the morning, before the assistant had access to it, than at any other time. It seemed like the result of visits from the "drudging goblin," whose capacity was tested

"When in one night ere glimpse of

But the source of the phenomenon in the eyes of the attendants was simple and obvious. The convict had risen in the night to the work, and given a precedent for setting her to work at regulation hours. An instance occurred when a clever officer suggested the pitting of personal vanity against the vanity of mystification. The convict was paralysed. She was proof against all attempts to surprise her out of her malingering by physical means, but she could not resist the temptation of a pair of new shoes, and presented her feet promptly to be invested with them.

The question of the possible

reformation of the habitual criminal has evidently given much uneasy concern to those who have undertaken it. We are told that in Ireland the feat has been accomplished, and the assertion is supported by a crowd of instances where fiends have been converted into angels of light; but Ireland is always producing some phenomenon flagrantly contradictory to our experience in other parts of the empire. An official man connected with the administration of justice justice elsewhere having visited Ireland for the purpose of practically examining the whole matter, brought back some curious items of information. He had had the good fortune to enjoy the hospitality of an ardent admirer of the system so ardent that he had selected all his servants from jailbirds; and his table was served by ticket-of-leave men. ticket-of-leave men. The presiding female genius of the house gave practical confirmation to the success of the scheme, saying, that since she had been served by ex-convicts she had never thought it necessary to lock up her plate and jewels. In people who find their way to conclusions of this kind there must be a store of sunny happiness much to be envied by people less fortunate. How much they must enjoy, for instance, of all that is denied to persons like a sceptical old prison officer who, in the course of some practical discussions on the Irish convict millennium, remarked that "there are no thieves in Ireland because there is nothing there to steal"! But there is a partial meaning in the abrupt conclusion. It is not by the wealth of the inmates of palaces and castles that the thief is supported, but by the abundant sums of money and articles of value distributed in other parts of the empire among multitudes individ

THE most striking object which meets the eye from the summit of the highest mound of ruin of the ancient city of Arsinoë, is the Pyramid of Howara, distant about five miles as the crow flies from the modern town of Medinet el Fayoum, but considerably farther by the road, if the narrow paths which traverse the fields can be called roads, for the country is so intersected by canals, that one is frequently obliged, in riding, to make long detours in search of a bridge. As our capacity for enduring fatigue was somewhat limited, we determined, under these circumstances, to make the expedition in a boat-a mode of locomotion not usually employed in the Fayoum. There are, indeed, only about fourteen miles of navigable river, the sluices at Illahoon barring all farther progress eastwards, and the subdivision of the Bahr Youssef at Medinet into numerous minor canals blocking it by dams and water-wheels in all directions. I held converse with the head of the boating fraternity on the feasibility of my project, and found that ten heavy barges and two small boats composed the entire carrying capacity of the river. The barges are used for conveying manure to the fields adjoining the canal, and bringing their produce to the town. I inspected the small boats, and having selected the one which was least old and leaky, had her cleaned, and an awning put up in the stern. I am thus particular in describing the boating resources of the canal, because I was misled by the glow

ing description of Monsieur Lenoir,* in an account which he gives of a hurried visit to the Fayoum, and its chief town, of the general accuracy of which his description of its commerce may serve as an illustration:

"Boats and immense barges," he says, "are moored as far as the eye can reach along its brick quays, which come hither to obtain grain and straw, the produce of the last harvest. Numberless caravans compete with this navigation transport, and serve to

connect Medinet with Cairo."

saw

Out of the twelve boats and barges which exist, I never more than two fastened to the riverbank at one time. "The brick quays along which they are moored as far as the eye can reach," exist entirely in the writer's imagination; and it is evident, as the canal is only navigable for about fourteen miles in an exactly opposite direction to that of Cairo, which is about seventy miles distant, that the "numberless caravans" have not much reason to fear competition. It is true that in former years, during the inundation, boats came up from the Nile by the El Magnoun canal to Illahoon, where produce was transferred from the barges from Medinet; but this route has long been discontinued, and there is now no connection between Illahoon and Cairo, excepting by following the tortuous course of the Bahr Youssef up to Siout, which would involve a circuit of nearly 500 miles. As a matter of fact, the produce of the Fayoum goes to Cairo neither by camel nor boat, but by railway. Sails are not used by this magnificent fleet of