that it was impossible to discern her features. The stranger, however, upraised her veil, and there stood C. M., genteelly attired, her hair disposed in ringlets, and her fine features seen to an advantage which the prison costume had little favored. "With tears she besought my advice and assistance, described her lack of friends, relatives, or pecuniary resources, and avowed her anxious desire to be saved from the ruin that seemed to menace her. Moved by her earnest solicitation, I recommended her to fly for counsel and assistance to a Samaritan lady, whom she had known as a prison visitor. I furnished her with the address, to which she forthwith repaired, and finding there a willing ear and Christian pathy, C. M. entered an asylum exactly suited to her condition, under the auspices of that kind patroness, from whence she was soon transferred to a family, to whose members the history of her severe afflictions had been confided. sym "The last accounts of her were all that could be wished, most creditable to her character, and hopeful as to her future welfare. Whether Captain J. was ever able to indemnify her for the sufferings which his thoughtless levity had entailed upon her, I could never learn, although I casually heard, that the incidents of that catastrophe severed his engagement with Miss N. Here, at least, was one case of genuine innocence, out of the many thousands falsely alleged." Unfounded claims to gentility are not at all uncommon in prisoners. A so-called Honorable Mr. Talbot-a professed swindler-plumed himself upon being a classical scholar, yet he had never heard of Ovid or Virgil! One old beggar woman insisted upon being better than Col. C. himself. "I am a gentlewoman!" she would aver. "My father wasn't governor of a jail, he was governor of the West Indies!" Some of these cases were evidently cases of mental aberration. One real old gentlewoman -very rich into the bargain-was incarcerated for shoplifting, and the newspapers having circulated reports of her wealth, eccentricities, and misfortunes, there came for her an offer of marriage from a baronet. "With the letter in my hand," Col. C. relates, "I sought out Mrs. Collins, and presenting it to her, said, smilingly, There, Mrs. Collins, is an offer of marriage for you.' For me, sir!' she exclaim ed, with her usual strong Irish accent; and seizing the letter, read a few lines, and muttering some contemptuous words, she indignantly cast it into the fire, seemingly enraged at the temerity of the writer." Col. Chesterton knew the baronet in question-he was immersed in pecuniary em barrassments. A "beautiful burglar" sounds like a strange antithesis; yet it appears that there are such to be met with in real life as well as in fiction: "A. By was a young creature, little more than eighteen years of age, who had yet twice been convicted of burglary at dead of night, and was then undergoing a sentence of one year's imprisonment for that very unfeminine offence. No one who saw her could fail to award her the meed of beauty. Short of stature, but critically proportioned, she was distinguished by a petite tournure of faultless symmetry. With a profusion of raven hair, brilliant eyes of jet, teeth of polished whiteness, her small expressive features were arched by brows which imparted an air of intellectuality to the whole countenance. Her deportment indicated gentleness, and she moved with the grace of a sylph. Amongst the many thousands of her sex, who, during twenty-five years, have been under my control, A. B. stands recorded in my memory as preeminent beyond every other in outward beauty." We must conclude our gatherings from these curious and most interesting, as well as suggestive Revelations of Prison Life, with a remarkable case of combined impudence and plausibility : "I betook myself one morning, according to custom, to the reception ward, where stood arrayed for my inspection the incomers of the previous day. Amongst the crowd, varying apprehension, would occasionally be seen an assemblage of persons of all outward appearances -smart, decent, and dirty. On this morning, however, the throng was unusually unseemly, and served more effectually to set off the unwonted contrast of a tall young man of the most fashionable exterior. Much surprised to observe ward aspect of a gentleman, I eagerly inquired a person elegantly attired, and bearing the outinto the cause of his imprisonment, and was answered with a shrug of the shoulders, and a heavy sigh: A strange mistake. I am accused of picking the pocket of an officer of the Guards, at a bazaar. My name is Hawkesbury; I am the son of a major in the army, and am connected with some of the best families in England.' I tary of State, and affirmed that such an error could only recommend an appeal to the Secre(if error it should prove) might be speedily rectified. from time to time with the circumstances of their "During the forenoon, while I was occupied in my office, I was suddenly apprised that a gentleman desired to see me, when in walked a man of medium age, elegantly attired, and appearing to labor under excessive emotion. He held his handkerchief to his eyes, and appeared scarcely able to support himself, owing to the extremity of his agitation. I was moved by such wellsimulated affliction, and employed the language of kind persuasiveness to restore composure, and, apparently, with effect. In a short time the stranger proceeded to inform me he was Major Hawkesbury, and that his unfortunate son was then my prisoner. "He dilated upon the fatal mistake, proclaimed his close connection with a distinguished baronet, enlarged upon his elevated kindred and social ties, and all with such a specious assumption of truthfulness, that I was completely imposed upon, and verily confided in the entire statement. He shrank from any appeal to the Secretary of State: The family name must not be allowed to transpire in connection with such a stigma upon it; the whole matter must be kept secret; and he had only to implore my clemency towards his son. With my promise that I would watch over the health and safety of the young man, the soi-disant wretched father departed, leaving me in the firm belief that he was such as he had described himself to be. "Hawkesbury's deportment was meek and submissive. He duly fulfilled his sentence of six weeks, and left the prison with health apparently unimpaired. with eagerness towards me, he seized my hand, "With every fresh allegation on my part, his assurance increased, and the whole scene was one combining a cool hardihood and unblushing effrontery that none but a designing, yet clever cheat, could sustain. Inviting the magistrate to visit him at Cloudesley Terrace, he bowed stiffly to me, and promptly withdrew. Upwards of two years had rolled by, when the same daily routine took me to the reception ward, and there my wondering eyes once more beheld the elegant Hawkesworth,' who on this occasion had assumed a slight change of name. Again he pleaded some strange mistake, reïterated his claims to high lineage, and derided the supposition that such an one as he could, as al- "I instantly dispatched an officer, thoroughly leged, have picked a pocket at the Italian Opera. acquainted with Hammersmith, to make the reHowever, he urged these pleas in vain; his call-quisite inquiries, and was by no means surprised ing was now clearly defined, and I assured him to learn that there was no such place as Cloudeshe would not dupe me a second time. He had ley Terrace there, nor was Mr. Howard, R.A., received the maximum sentence of three calen-known in that neighborhood. dar months, and I warned him to prepare to pass his days on the tread-wheel. 66 At mid-day I was in my office, engaged in conversation with a country magistrate, when, suddenly, the most thundering knock the outer gate had ever experienced, startled the whole building from its propriety. The gate quickly opened, there entered with affected dignity a fashionably-dressed stranger, who, in the loudest tone of voice, demanded if the governor were within. The gate-warder, cap in hand, bowed with the most deferential respect, and conducted the magnate to my office, where the magistrate and myself were lost in wonder as to who the mysterious stranger could be. No sooner did the intruder catch sight of me, than, rushing "The same two scoundrels were subsequently apprehended for picking pockets at the Yacht Ball, at Cowes, and were committed for trial. Their acquaintance with legal forms and special technicalities enabled them, by writ of habeas, to be brought before a judge at chambers, and there, by misrepresentation, they became admitted to bail. Although the bail was heavy, the danger of transportation was imminent, so they deemed it the safer course to forfeit their sureties, and decamp to America. They were the best dressed and most polished thieves with whom I ever came in contact, while their fictitious assumptions, and daily counterfeit personifications, endowed them with an easy tact and pliability worthy of the stage." From the Westminster Review. RALPH WALDO EMERSON ON THE ENGLISH.* Mr. Emerson has given us a book from which we may learn many things; much about ourselves, about what we have, and about what we have not; and, still more, from which we may learn that the nobleness of spirit which gives praise as well as blame where it is due, may be relied on as existing across the Atlantic. ENGLISHMEN have a particular plea- | manner impossible, perhaps, to a foreigner. sure in hearing and reading criticisms on their own country. They are perfectly impervious to the shafts of ridicule or the revilings of abuse, and can enjoy a joke at their own expense as heartily as if a neighbor were the sufferer. Nothing delights a cockney more than to see the traditional Englishman of the French theatre, padded to do justice to the national fat, rollicking on the stage in a green cutaway, offering to sell his wife to all comers, and confining his conversation to the disconnected but suggestive expressions "Goddem" and "Rosbif." But perhaps this equanimity is itself a provoking trait in the national character, and may be one of the chief causes of the irritation with which most foreigners speak of Englishmen. Certain ly there are very few works on England by foreigners which treat the subject either fairly or with any degree of vigor and originality. Lesser men cannot overcome their chagrin at the indifference displayed by the criticised to the critic; greater men fear they should not do justice to a nation so insular and peculiar. It is, therefore, a welcome novelty that within the last twelve months the England of the present day should have been the subject of publications from the pen of two writers so different, yet each so piquant and so able, as M. Montalembert and Mr. Emerson. Englishmen cannot complain of any want of courtesy, or any deficiency of insight, on the part of either author; but, glad as we are to see the admiration bestowed on England by a distinguished Frenchman, we are still more pleased with the friendly and honest tribute of an American. It is nearer our hearts to be well understood by America than by any other country. A kindred blood, too, runs in the veins of the critic, and teaches him to appreciate those of whom he writes in a Mr. Emerson came to England, in 1847, to give a course of lectures at the request of the managers of the Union of Mechanics' Institutes. As he remarks, this invitation not only secured him an indemnity for his travelling expenses, but gave him a ready introduction into the society of many important towns. He opens his commentaries by the remark made so often by Americans, that "England is a garden.” "The fields," he says, "appear to have been finished with a pencil instead of a plough." No sentence could have better introduced us to what was coming, and prepared us for what we had to expect. We might be sure it was an inhabitant of a new and a vast continent who could speak with such exaggeration; as we might also be sure that the phrase could only belong to a lover of elaborate epigrams. It is the characteristic of Mr. Emerson's writing, that it consists of thousands of such sentences-short, pointed, yet conceived on a large scale. Johnson tells Boswell that he had once read a long passage from "Thomson's Seasons," omitting every other line, that his hearers never found it out, and thought the passage exceedingly fine. Mr. Emerson seems to have cut out every other line of his observations, and to have distilled the spirit of his remarks into the smallest compass, in order to season them more highly. Reading his book is like eating potted meat; it is very good, very creditable to the cook, and a little of it goes a long way, but it is not exactly the genuine beef. We have got to add something, to add bulk and proportions,before we arrive at what Mr. Emerson really the one foams and trembles, the other | the West and the luxuries of the East are smiles as coolly as if he were but playing with a baby's toy. Even women and children of tender years will do the same. Horse-exercise is the great amusement of the Calmucs, and a mastery over the rebellious spirit of an untamed animal their glory and delight. But we must leave this spectacle. The day is closing in, and a splendid banquet awaits us at the palace. The delicacies of lavished on our senses. The cooking, half French and half Russian, leaves the nicest appetite little to desire. Everything is served on silver and gold, and the wines of France and Spain tinge the crystal glasses, while champagne sparkles like waters from a Moorish fountain. So lives Prince Tumen, the worshipper of the Grand Lama, and the believer in the doctrine of metempsychosis. From the New Monthly Magazine. REVELATIONS 0 F PRISON LIFE.* PRISON life was not formerly as it is now. When Col. Chesterton was appointed governor of Cold Bath Fields-the largest prison in the world, numbering within its walls a daily average of 1400 souls-men and women, boys and girls, were indiscriminately herded together, without employment or wholesome control; while smoking, gaming, singing, and every species of brutalizing conversation and demeanor, tended to the unlimited advancement of crime and pollution. The governor of that day walked about, bearing in his hand a knotted rope, with which he could inflict summary chastisement. Moral influences were quite unthought of. The functionaries were all corrupt, the yardsmen were such prisoners as could afford to bid the highest price for acting as deputy-turnkeys. There was, indeed, no restraint upon the will and wishes of those who had money. From one end of the prison to the other there existed a vast illicit commerce at an exorbitant rate of profit. The poor and friendless man, on the other hand, was wretchedly maltreated and oppressed. Nor was this all. "Within a short period of the exercise of my new authority, (Col. Chesterton relates,) private intelligence conveyed to me the startling fact, favored portions of the male and female prisoners that a well-planned system had long enabled daily to meet together in one of the roofs of the building, and I was furnished with a clue to the discovery of the whole contrivance, and the exact hour of the rendezvous. This clandestine arrangement was consequently, one afternoon, suddenly disturbed by my unlooked-for presence, supported by a few officials, who dared not full extent of this iniquity stood thus divulged. disobey the direction to accompany me. The The men fled with precipitate haste; but Mary Barry, and a woman named Christmas, were caught in the very act of descending from a trapdoor, which opened to the roof; and the consternation occasioned by this discovery became perfectly electric. "A close examination of the means adopted to simple solution. The female wards, as I have insure this unlawful meeting disclosed a very already described, were merely portions of the main building imperfectly fenced off from the males' department. The roof in question ran longitudinally over both compartments. It was accessible by an iron grating on the males' side. which had once been soldered down, but was which had now removable at pleasure; and, on the other to be reached by standing on an iron balustrade, and then climbing two or three feet up a perpen dicular iron supporter, whence the trap-door was easily upraised. "Here, then, was revealed another infamous source of profit to this immaculate prison staff, of both sexes. It at once threw a light upon a delicate investigation of a few preceding years, when, in order to cloak a monstrous dereliction of duty, and to screen the real delinquents, a story was trumped up, which nearly ruined the character of a most respectable man, then clerk to the prison." It was no slight task to undertake to reform this state of things, and to cleanse such an Augean stable. Col. Chesterton was, however, aided in his plans by a prisoner of the name of Thompson or Mozley, who had been an officer in the Indian army, and had reduced himself to beggary by gaming, and, at length, to the utmost destitution by drink-the result of despair. Amid his complicated faults and misfortunes, this person still retained many of the refined feelings of a gentleman, and Col. Chesterton made him his confidant. He was also aided by the appointment of a pensioned sergeant as chief turnkey. The relations established between the governor and the prisoner Thompson did not, however, escape the other prisoners, whose jealousies it naturally excited, and they soon found a means of punishing the offending spy. "Many days had not elapsed, ere one evening loud cries were heard to issue from a room containing some thirty prisoners. I chanced to be in the garden, contiguous to the scene of disorder, and hearing cries of distress, I summoned to my aid a few officers, and rushed to ascertain the cause. No sooner was the door opened than there stood Thompson, trembling with terror, and dripping with perspiration. Missiles of various kinds had been hurled at him from all parts of the room, and he became in dread of losing his life. Preconcert was manifest in this outrage, for each assailant, as he suddenly started up and threw, as suddenly lay down, and no one aggressor could be recognized. The coolest effrontery was exhibited in the general denial, and the entire clique would fain have cajoled me by the assurance that Thompson's excited brain must have conjured up an imaginary scene of violence. "He, however, assured me he had not slept, and that no sort of deception had lurked beneath his apprehensions, for they were too well founded. Certain it is, I never saw a creature more overpowered by affright, and he was withdrawn from the room more dead than alive; nor do I think he ever quite recovered his composure during his after abode in the prison." The spirit of revenge was not only aroused against his ally, but against the governor himself, for the reforms that he fixed was introducing in prison discipline. Anonymous letters, breathing vengeance against him, poured thickly in, and although they did not deter him from his purpose, they awakened both anxiety and alarm for his personal safety. He was obliged to carry loaded pistols in his pocket by day, and he slept with the same weapons beside him at night. He never left the outer gate, or returned to it, without a careful reconnaissance of every person or object near it. His position was truly one fraught with labor, care, and peril.. The same reforming spirit so curtailed the stealthy comforts of the incarcerated, or fenced their attainment about with obstacles, that the increased irksomeness of confinement suggested, amongst other remedies, besides the destruction of the governor, various plans of escape. It was after a baffled attempt of this kind that Sir Edward Lytton Bulwer visited the establishment. he inquired if I had ever had an escape?' I answered, 'No,' but appeared to delight him by the information that we had recently frustrated a well-conceived plot, for he seemed eagerly to catch at my words, and anxiously asked for the particulars. I conducted him to the very yard, showed the track of the now concealed water-pipe, and thence took him to various spots, and confided to him the whole details of the design. He seemed to take a special interest in the development of the scheme; nor had I the least idea of the use to which my exposition was ere long to be converted. "In the course of our walk through the wards, "On taking his leave, Sir Edward charitably presented me with 57., which he begged might be distributed amongst a few poor but deserving prisoners on their discharge. Now, if the reader will take the pains to refer to the interesting novel of 'Paul Clifford,' he will there perceive how the artifices of my impatient flock have been enriched by description, and adapted to the requirements of a tale of fiction." It was not a little singular that it sometimes happened to Col. Chesterton to have acquaintances under his charge. He says that it was not an uncommon thing for gentlemen jocularly to implore his clemency in the event of their being forcibly compelled to become his guests; and with the smiles which such badinage has created, he says he has been constrained by experience to admonish many that such a contingency was not altogether impossible! |