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superlative. The prisoners sat at work,-light work, picking oakum and the like,-in airy apartments with glass roofs, of agreeable temperature and perfect ventilation; silent, or at least conversing only by secret signs; others were out, taking their hour of promenade in clean, flagged courts; methodic composure, cleanliness, peace, substantial wholesome comfort, reigned everywhere supreme. The women in other apartments, some notable murderesses among them, all in the like state of methodic composure and substantial wholesome comfort, sat sewing; in long ranges of wash-houses, dryinghouses, and whatever pertains to the getting-up of clean linen, were certain others, with all conceivable mechanical furtherances, not too arduously working. The notable murderesses were, though with great precautions of privacy, pointed out to us; and we were requested not to look openly at them, or seem to notice them at all, as it was found to "cherish their vanity" when visitors looked at them. Schools, too, were there; intelligent teachers, of both sexes, studiously instructing the still ignorant of these thieves.

The captain of the place, a gentleman of ancient military or royal navy habits, was one of the most perfect governors; professionally and by nature zealous for cleanliness, punctuality, good order of every kind; a humane heart, and yet a strong one; soft of speech and manner, yet with an inflexible rigour of command, so far as his limits went ; "iron hand in a velvet glove," as Napoleon defined it. A man of real worth, challenging at once love and respect; the light of those mild bright eyes seemed to permeate the place as with an all-pervading vigilance, and kindly yet victorious illumination; in the soft, definite voice, it was as if Nature herself were promulgating her orders, gentlest, mildest orders, which, however, in the end, there would be no disobeying, which, in the end, there would be no living without fulfilment of. A true commander of men. A man worthy to have commanded and guided forward, in good ways, twelve hundred of the best common people in London or the world; he was here, for many years past, giving all his care and faculty to command and guide forward in such ways as there were, twelve hundred of the worst. I looked with considerable admiration on this gentleman; and with considerable astonishment, the reverse of admiration, on the work he had been here set upon.

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This excellent captain was too old a commander to complain of anything indeed he struggled visibly the other way, to find in his own mind that all here was best; but I could sufficiently discern that, in his natural instincts, if not mounting up to the region of his thoughts, there was a continual protest going on against much of it; that nature and all his inarticulate persuasion (however much forbidden to articulate itself) taught him the futility and unfeasibility of the system followed here. The visiting magistrates, he gently regretted rather than complained, had lately taken his treadwheel from him-men were just now pulling it down; and how he was henceforth to enforce discipline on these bad subjects was much a difficulty with him. They cared for nothing but the treadwheel,

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and for having their rations cut short;" of the two sole penalties, hard work and occasional hunger, there remained now only one, and that by no means the better one, as he thought. The "sympathy" of the visitors, too, their "pity" for his interesting scoundrel-subjects, though he tried to like it, was evidently no joy to this practical mind. Pity, yes-but pity for the scoundrel-species? For those who will not have pity on themselves, and will force the universe and the laws of nature to have no "pity" on them? Meseems I could discover fitter objects of pity.

In fact, it was too clear this excellent man had got a field for his faculties which, in several respects, was by no means the suitable one. To drill twelve hundred scoundrels by "the method of kindness," and of abolishing your very treadwheel-how could any commander rejoice to have such a work cut out for him? You had but to look in the faces of these twelve hundred, and despair, for most part, of ever "commanding" them at all. Miserable distorted blockheads, the generality; ape-faces, imp-faces, angry dog-faces, heavy sullen ox-faces; degraded underfoot perverse creatures, sons of indocility, greedy mutinous darkness, and, in one word, stupidity, which is the general mother of such. Stupidity-intellectual and stupidity-moral (for the one always means the other, as you will, with surprise or not, discover if you look) had borne this progeny; base-natured beings, on whom, in the course of a maleficent subterranean life of London scoundrelism, the Genius of Darkness (called Satan, Devil, and other names) had now visibly impressed his seal, and had marked them out as soldiers of Chaos and of him— appointed to serve in his regiments, first of the line, second ditto, and so on in their order. Him, you could perceive, they would serve; but not easily another than him. These were the subjects whom our brave captain and prison-governor was appointed to command, and reclaim to other service, by "the method of love," with a

treadwheel abolished.

Hopeless for evermore such a project! These abject, ape, wolf, ox, imp, and other diabolic-animal specimens of humanity-who of the very gods could ever have commanded them by love? A collar round the neck, and a cart-whip flourished over the back—these, in a just and steady human hand, were what the gods would have appointed them; and now when, by long misconduct and neglect, they had sworn themselves into the Devil's regiments of the line, and got the seal of Chaos impressed on their visage, it was very doubtful whether even these would be of avail for the unfortunate commander of twelve hundred men. By "love," without hope, except of peacefully teasing oakum, or fear, except of a temporary loss of dinner, he was to guide these men, and wisely constrain them-whitherward? Nowhither; that was his goal, if you will think well of it; that was a second fundamental falsity in his problem. False in the warp, and false in the woof, thought one of us ; about as false a problem as any I have seen a good man set upon lately! To guide scoundrels by "love," that is a false woof, I

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take it, a method that will not hold together; hardly for the flower of men will love alone do, and for the sediment and scoundrelism of men it has not even a chance to do. And then, to guide any class of men, scoundrel or other, nowhither, which was this poor captain's problem in this prison, with oakum for its one element of hope or outlook, how can that prosper by "love," or by any conceivable method? That is a warp wholly false. Out of which false warp, or originally false condition to start from, combined and daily woven into by your false woof, or methods of "love" and suchlike, there arises for our poor captain the falsest of problems, and, for a man of his faculty, the unfairest of situations. His problem was, not to command good men to do something, but bad men to do (with superficial disguises) nothing.

2. RICHARD ARKWRIGHT.

Richard Arkwright, it would seem, was not a beautiful man; no romance-hero, with haughty eyes, Apollo-lip, and gesture like the herald Mercury; a plain, almost gross, bag-cheeked, pot-bellied Lancashire-man, with an air of painful reflection, yet also of copious free digestion; a man stationed by the community to shave certain dusty beards, in the northern parts of England, at a halfpenny each. To such end, we say, by forethought, oversight, accident and arrangement, had Richard Arkwright been, by the community of England and his own consent, set apart. Nevertheless, in strapping of razors, in lathering of dusty beards, and the contradictions and confusions attendant thereon, the man had notions in that rough head of his-spindles, shuttles, wheels, and contrivances plying ideally within the same-rather hopeless-looking, which, however, he did at last bring to bear. Not without difficulty. His townsfolk rose in mob around him, for threatening to shorten labour, to shorten wages, so that he had to fly, with broken washpots, scattered household, and seek refuge elsewhere. Nay, his wife too, as I learn, rebelled; burnt his wooden model of his spinning-wheel-resolute that he should stick to his razors rather for which, however, he decisively, as thou wilt rejoice to understand, packed her out of doors. O reader, what a historical phenomenon is that bag-cheeked, pot-bellied, much-enduring, much-inventing barber! French Revolutions were a-brewing; to resist the same in any measure, imperial kaisers were impotent without the cotton and cloth of England; and it was this man that had to give England the power of cotton!

3. LABOUR.

There is a perennial nobleness, and even sacredness, in Work. Were he never so benighted, forgetful of his high calling, there is always hope in a man that actually and earnestly works; in idleness alone is there perpetual despair. Work, never so Mammonish, mean, is in communication with Nature; the real desire to get work done

will itself lead one more and more to truth,-to Nature's appointments and regulations, which are truth. The latest gospel in this world is, Know thy work and do it. "Know thyself;" long enough has this poor "self" of thine tormented thee; thou wilt never get to "know" it, I believe ! Think it not thy business, this of knowing thyself; thou art an unknowable individual: know what thou canst work at; and work at it like a Hercules! That will be thy better plan. It has been written, “An endless significance lies in work ;" a man perfects himself by working. Foul jungles are cleared away,-fair seed-fields rise instead, and stately cities; and withal the man himself first ceases to be a jungle and foul unwholesome desert thereby. Consider how, even in the meanest sorts of labour, the whole soul of a man is composed into a kind of real harmony, the instant he sets himself to work! Doubt, Desire, Sorrow, Remorse, Indignation, Despair itself, all these, like hell-dogs, lie beleaguering the soul of the poor day-worker, as of every man ; but he bends himself with free valour against his task, and all these are stilled; all these shrink, murmuring, far off into their caves. The man is now a man. The blessed glow of Labour in him—is it not as purifying fire, wherein all poison is burnt up, and of sour smoke itself there is made bright, blessed flame ! Destiny, on the whole, has no other way of cultivating us. A formless chaos, once set it revolving, grows round and ever rounder; ranges itself, by mere force of gravity, into strata, spherical courses; is no longer a chaos, but a round, compacted world. What would become of the Earth, did she cease to revolve? In the poor old Earth, as long as she revolves, all inequalities, irregularities, disperse themselves; all irregularities are incessantly becoming regular. Hast thou looked on the potter's wheel, one of the venerablest objects, old as the prophet Ezekiel, and far older? Rude lumps of clay, how they spin themselves up, by mere quick whirling, into beautiful circular dishes! And fancy the most assiduous potter-but without his wheel-reduced to make dishes, or rather amorphous botches, by mere kneading and baking! Even such a potter were Destiny, with a human soul that would rest and lie at ease, that would not work and spin! Of an idle unrevolving man, the kindest Destiny, like the most assiduous potter without wheel, can bake and knead nothing other than a botch; let her spend on him what expensive colouring, what gilding and enamelling she will, he is but a botch, not a dish; no: a bulging, kneaded, crooked, shambling, squint-cornered, amorphous botch,-a mere enamelled vessel of dishonour! Let the idle think of this.

Blessed is he who has found his work; let him ask no other blessedness. He has a work, a life-purpose; he has found it, and will follow it! How, as a free-flowing channel, dug and torn by noble force through the sour mud-swamp of one's existence, like an ever-deepening river, there it runs and flows; draining off the sour festering water, gradually, from the root of the remotest grass-blade ; making, instead of pestilential swamp, a green fruitful meadow with its clear flowing stream. How blessed for the meadow itself, let the

stream and its value be great or small! Labour is life: from the inmost heart of the worker rises his God-given force; the sacred celestial Life-Essence breathed into him by Almighty God, from his inmost heart awakens him to all nobleness, to all knowledge,—“ Selfknowledge," and much else,-so soon as work fitly begins. Knowledge? The knowledge that will hold good in working, cleave thou to that; for Nature herself accredits that, says Yea to that. Properly, thou hast no other knowledge but what thou hast got by working the rest is yet all a hypothesis of knowledge; a thing to be argued of in schools,—a thing floating in the clouds, in endless logic vortices, till we try it and fix it. "Doubt, of whatever kind, can be ended by action alone."

4. LIBERTY.

Liberty? The true liberty of a man, you would say, consisted in his finding out, or being forced to find out the right path, and to walk thereon. To learn, or to be taught, what work he actually was able for and then by permission, persuasion, and even compulsion, to set about doing of the same! That is his true blessedness, honour, "liberty," and maximum of wellbeing; if liberty be not that, I for one have small care about liberty. You do not allow a palpable madman to leap over precipices; you violate his liberty, -you that are wise, and keep him, were it in strait-waistcoats, away from the precipices! Every stupid, every cowardly and foolish man, is but a less palpable madman: his true liberty were that a wiser man could, by brass collars, or in whatever milder or sharper way, lay hold of him when he was going wrong, and order and compel him to go a little righter. O, if thou really art my Senior, Seigneur, my Elder, Presbyter or Priest,-if thou art in very deed my Wiser, may a beneficent instinct lead and impel thee to conquer me, to command me! If thou do know better than I what is good and right, I conjure thee in the name of God, force me to do it; were it by never such brass collars, whips, and handcuffs, leave me not to walk over precipices! That I have been called, by all the newspapers a "free man," will avail me little, if my pilgrimage have ended in death and wreck. O that the newspapers had called me slave, coward, fool, or what it pleased their sweet voices to name me, and I had attained, not death, but life! Liberty requires new definitions.

XIX. SIR EDWARD BULWER LYTTON.

SIR EDWARD BULWER LYTTON has been long known to the public as one of the most voluminous of our novelists. He is the youngest son of the late General Bulwer, and was educated at Cambridge. His turn for composition was manifested at a precociously early period ;