you come to him, obsequious, but too late, with your sharp laurel-crown, the dew all dried from off its leaves; and you thrust it into his languid hand, and he looks at you wistfully. What shall he do with it? What can he do, but go and lay it on his mother's grave?

SIR ROGER DE COVERLEY AT CHURCH.

Ruskin.

I am always well pleased with a country Sunday, and think, if keeping holy the seventh day were only a human institution, it would be the best method that could have been thought of for the polishing and civilizing of mankind. It is certain the country people would soon degenerate into a kind of savages and barbarians, were there not such frequent returns of a stated time, in which the whole village meet together with their best faces, and in their cleanliest habits, to converse with one another upon different subjects, hear their duties explained to them, and join together in adoration of the Supreme Being.

My friend Sir Roger, being a good churchman, has beautified the inside of his church with several texts of his own choosing. He has likewise given a handsome pulpit-cloth, and railed in the communion table at his own expense. He has often told me, that at his coming to his estate, he found his parishioners very irregular: and that in order to make them kneel, and join in the responses, he gave every one of them a hassock and a Common Prayer Book; and at the same time employed an itinerant singing-master, who goes about the country for that purpose, to instruct them rightly in the tunes of the Psalms, upon which they now very much value themselves, and indeed outdo most of the country churches that I have ever heard.

As Sir Roger is landlord to the whole congregation, he keeps them in very good order, and will suffer nobody to sleep in it besides himself; for if by chance. he has been surprised into a short nap at sermon, upon

recovering out of it, he stands up and looks about him, and if he sees anybody else nodding, either wakes them himself, or sends his servants to them. Several other of the old knight's particularities break out upon these occasions. Sometimes he will be lengthening out a verse in the singing Psalms, half a minute after the rest of the congregation have done with it; sometimes, when he is pleased with the matter of his devotion, he pronounces Amen three or four times in the same prayer; and sometimes stands up when everybody else is upon their knees, to count the congregation, or see if any of his tenants are missing.

I was yesterday very much surprised to hear my old friend, in the midst of the service, calling out to one John Matthews to mind what he was about, and not disturb the congregation. This John Matthews, it seems, is remarkable for being an idle fellow, and at that time was kicking his heels for his diversion. This authority of the knight, though exerted in that odd manner which accompanies him in all the circumstances of life, has a very good effect upon the parish, who are not polite enough to see anything ridiculous in his behaviour; besides that the general good sense and worthiness of his character make his friends observe these little singularities as foils that rather set off than blemish his good qualities.

As soon as the sermon is finished, nobody presumes to stir till Sir Roger is gone out of the church. The knight walks down from his seat in the chancel between a double row of his tenants, that stand bowing to him on each side; and every now and then inquires how such a one's wife, or mother, or son, or father do, whom he does not see at church; which is understood as a secret reprimand to the person that is absent. Addison.

VISIT TO A MODEL PRISON.

Several months ago some friends took me with them to see one of the London prisons-a prison of the

exemplary or model kind. An immense circuit of buildings, cut out, girt with a high ring-wall, from the lanes and streets of the quarter, which is a dim and crowded one. Gateway as to a fortified place; then a spacious court, like the square of a city; broad staircases, passages to interior courts; fronts of stately architecture all round. It lodges some thousand or twelve hundred prisoners, besides the officers of the establishment. Surely one of the most perfect buildings within the compass of London. We looked at the apartments, sleeping cells, dining-rooms, working-rooms, general courts, or special and private: excellent all, the ne plus ultra of human care and ingenuity; probably no duke in England lives in a mansion of such perfect and thorough cleanness.

The bread, the cocoa, soup, meat, all the various sorts of food, in their respective cooking-places, we tasted; found them of excellence 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, drying-houses, 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.

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, 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 oxfaces; degraded underfoot perverse creatures, sons of indocility, greedy mutinous darkness, and, in one word, stupidity, which is the general mother of such. Stupidityintellectual 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; basenatured 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 prisongovernor 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.