We were

in studying the glorious institutions of our country. treated with the greatest respect, and ham sandwiches; and two magistrates handed us down to the carriage. For my part, I could not think we were in the criminal court, as the law was so uncommonly civil.'

That pleasing legal fiction by which stolen property is vested in the Crown, seems to have come upon this accomplished prosecutrix by surprise:

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I find that the idea of personal property is a fascinating illusion, for our goods belong, in fact, to our country and not to us; and that the petticoats and stockings which I have fondly imagined mine are really the petticoats of Great Britain and Ireland. I am now and then indulged with a distant glimpse of my most necessary garments in the hands of different policemen; but, "in this stage of the pro"ceedings," may do no more than wistfully recognise them. Even on such occasions, the words of justice are: "Policeman B 25, produce your gowns." "Letter A 36, identify your lace." "Letter C, tie "up your stockings." All this is harrowing to the feelings, but one cannot have everything in this life! We have obtained justice, and can easily wait for a change of linen. Hopes are held out to us that at some vague period in the lapse of time we may be allowed a wear out of our raiment at least, so much of it as may have resisted the wear and tear of justice; and my poor mother looks confidently forward to being restored to the bosom of her silver tea-pot. But I don't know! I begin to look upon all property with a philosophic eye, as unstable in its nature, and liable to all sorts of pawnbrokers; moreover, the police and I have so long had my clothes in common, that I shall never feel at home in them again. To a virtuous mind, the idea that "Inspector Dowsett " examined into all one's hooks and eyes, tapes and buttons, &c. &c., is inexpressibly painful. But I cannot pursue that view of the subject. Let me hope, dear Miss Berry, that you feel for us as we really deserve, and that you wish me well "thro' my clothes" on Monday next!'

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Lady Charlotte Lindsay died in 1849; Agnes Berry in January 1852; when Mary writes, "I hope I am tolerably 'prepared to follow dear Agnes at as short à distance as I ever 'thought I should, and of which we have so often talked with 'mutual satisfaction.' The extent to which her sister was lamented by their common acquaintances was unexpected and proportionally delighted her. Pressing on one of them a cameo bracelet of herself that Agnes had always worn, and crying bitterly, she said: 'I give it to you; you always prized poor Ag as she deserved to be prized: others have waited till 'they missed her.'

From the hour of their separation by darker and darker for the survivor.

death, the scene grew She with difficulty

roused herself (June, 1852) to be privately presented to the Queen, who, by my friend, the Duchess of Sutherland, desired to make my acquaintance.' This is the last event recorded by her pen. On the 20th of November following, at midnight, without a struggle, scarcely a sigh, she breathed her last, in her ninetieth year.

This story of a life-for such it is, rather than what might be inferred from the title-page-is closed with taste and feeling by the Editor:

'With the lives of the sisters closed a society which will be ever remembered by all who frequented those pleasant little gatherings in Curzon Street. Sometimes a note, sometimes a word, and more often the lamp being lighted over the door, was taken as notice to attend, and, on entering, it might be to find only a few habitués, or a larger and more brilliant assembly. All that was uncertain; but it was certain to find the cordial welcome of the two genial, lively, well-dressed, distinguished-looking hostesses-the comfortable teatable, over which their friend Miss Anne Turner presided for years, and Lady Charlotte Lindsay, the third partner in the firm, clever and agreeable to the last. There was an absence of formality-a kindly mingling together of persons of various habits, pursuits, and positions in life, that tended to bring different portions of society together, as much as in other coteries there is a tendency to keep them apart; and when death had closed this little chapter in our social life, no one attempted, or, indeed, could have carried it on with equal success: their age, their experience in society, Miss Berry's acknowledged talent, their home-staying life, their absence of domestic duties and of family ties, all contributed to give them the power and the means which others have not, to do that which few would have done so well, under equally favourable circumstances.

'It has long been over, and death has set its seal on many who composed that society. A time must come to all, when the enjoyment of the present, and the hopes of the future, cede their place to the memory of the past. We cannot renew what is gone.

'Happy are those who can look back to social pleasures, to useful toil, and to domestic happiness, and gratefully recall the time" when "such things were"!'

We will not risk spoiling or weakening this most appropriate finale by amplification-by more last words. All we wish to add is that, thanks to the labour of love with which the memory of the founder of that society has been cherished and illustrated, her beneficial influence, her power of animating and improving by precept and example, will not perish with her. They are preserved, for all who are capable of understanding and appreciating her, by this book.

ART. II.-1. Our Convicts. By MARY CARPENTER. 2 vols. London: 1864.

2. Memoirs of Jane Cameron-Female Convict. By a PRISON MATRON. 2 vols. London: 1864.

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FTER all that has been published, in many forms, within a few years, we have never till now had the means placed before us of forming any true and complete conception of the distinctive life and character of the criminal class of our population. Miss Carpenter has at last supplied us with the material needed to qualify us so to understand the conditions of a life altogether unlike our own, as to enable us to perceive what sort of minds we have to deal with in our attempts to guard society from the evils of lawlessness. The main object of Miss Carpenter's book is to establish the principles on which our treatment of criminals should proceed; but while, in our opinion, she succeeds in this, she has perhaps rendered a yet greater service in disclosing to us the entire natural history of the lawless classes. She supplies us with the material essentially necessary as the basis of action on any theory of judgment and punishment of social offenders. Some of us may assume the reformation of criminals for their own sakes to be the first object; some may propose above everything else to render it impossible for criminals to repeat their offence; some would deter by the pain of punishment those who are corrupt and lawless from violating the order of society; some insist on the security of society as the object to be pursued, at any cost to criminals, whose welfare is quite a secondary consideration; while others hold that all these aims may be best accomplished by arresting crime at its source, and treating the ill-conditioned classes in their childhood, and thus preventing the growth and propagation of crime. But the first requisite to action under any of these views is to understand the peculiar character of criminal life, in its origin and progress. This requisite we believe Miss Carpenter to have supplied by the compilation of facts which she has presented to us. In the Memoirs of the celebrated Preston Chaplain, the Reverend John Clay, noticed in a former article of this Journal, we found a useful and interesting account of the workings of the various schemes of convict treatment tried since our prison reforms began; but that description could not obtain its full value till we held the pre

* Ed. Rev., vol. cxvii. p. 241.

liminary knowledge of the natural history of the lawless classes which has been accumulating since Mr. Clay's time, and which we find collected and methodised in the work before us. We are too apt to lose sight of that broad humanity which is common to us all, whenever some peculiarity masks it from our observation. A blind man is thought of not as a man who is blind, but as one separated from the rest of mankind by his blindness. A man addicted to liquor, becomes to all but his household connexions, a drunkard, and there's an end. So a man who has once transgressed the boundaries of the criminal law, is thenceforward a criminal, and in that term we seem, as it were, to drown many of the common attributes of human nature, though it is by the temptations of human nature itself that he has fallen. Yet, as Dr. Johnson felt, who can tell whether we ourselves might not change places with criminals on their way to the gallows, if the whole course of the existence of both parties could be truly judged on earth? The sources of crime are so mysterious, the circumstances which lead men into crimes so various, that it is only by a close study of the antecedents of the criminal classes, that we can hope to understand them, not only from our own point of view as breakers of the law, but from their point of view as victims of it.

In a rough way, we may say that there are three kinds of criminals among us. Of these, we may take first, for a very brief notice, the respectable men in society who suddenly become convicts. In no other case is the perplexity of dealing with that mysterious being--a criminal-so keenly felt. Some of us are no doubt conscious of it at this hour, when events bring up the name of William Roupell, or Sir John Dean Paul. We perhaps remember many an evening in the House when the one was sitting at our elbow, or talking within our hearing; and many a charity meeting when the other was busy on the platform, and listened to with sympathy and respect. What a gulf seems to have opened between them and us by their becoming convicts! Their life seems to be suddenly obliterated from our comprehension, and to have been governed by passions and forces above the average incidents of our social existence, though they appeared to be commonplace men enough till they acquired the notoriety of the Old Bailey. The fact is, however, that those who assumed to know them ought to have been aware of the conditions which ultimately determined their lot,-of the habits of self-indulgence, of the tendencies to vanity, to intrigue, to ostentation or mere trickery, while the weakness of the conscience ought to be recognisable in such cases after very little intercourse. The

history of Dr. Dodd has recently been republished in a curious and instructive little volume, which shows how naturally his vanity, extravagance, and want of truth led him to the offence for which he suffered; but in his case and on the occurrence of such incidents as are too common in our own time as in all others, instances of clergymen obtaining money on false pretences, or forging, or committing scandals of other kinds, it confounds the ordinary mind to think of the devout reading of prayers by the voice which has now to plead at the bar; and of the trust and deference hitherto enjoyed by the man whose word now goes for nothing, and who would never be spoken to again but for mere compassion. We need not dwell on such cases, because they produce their own effect upon society, and because this class of offenders is so small, and so sure to be watched over by public curiosity, that they can take care of themselves. When the moral is once pointed out,--that selfindulgence of one sort or another may bring after it such a fate as this, all is said that is most important; and we should know it without being told.

More perplexing, and, to our mind, more interesting, is the next class-that of the Kleptomaniacs, a joke to policereporters, and comfortable people who are not troubled by nature with any unmanageable propensities-the shoplifters, and other victims of irresistible natural impulses to crime. Now and then we are shocked by a repetition of the old phenomenon of some lady or gentleman of wealth and position stealing something;-so certainly having stolen money or goods, just as a common thief would do, that there is no ground for acquittal, if the excuse of morbid propensity is rejected. Thirty years ago, there was an elderly lady, wealthy and of an old family, serving out her time on the treadmill at Coldbath-fields with shaven head and in the prison dress. She had stolen lace from a shop. The modern bazaars have yielded several victims of a temptation which, to ninety-nine persons in a hundred, is not conceivable as a temptation at all. It is probable that most of us know, personally or by general reputation, some gentleman whose arrival is a signal to put out of reach anything portable which it would be inconvenient to lose,--from a medal, or an old-fashioned guinea, to a penknife. At any rate, we have all heard of a titled lady or two who always carried something from a party,-a teaspoon, or an operaglass, or, failing anything better, a few lumps of sugar. The articles being returned by her relations the next morning, justice did not move, even in menace. It is probable that no sensible man, either in the world or in the study, doubts the