and other countries, detailing the success of the new plans which she had introduced and recommended to the respective Governments.  A regular correspondence was kept up between her and Mr. Venning of St. Petersburg, by order of the Empress of Russia, who took the greatest interest in the benevolent enterprise.  From some letters given in the Memoirs of Mrs. Fry it seems that the Empress felt a true Womanly compassion for the inmates of the Government Lunatic Asylum, and inaugurated a system of more rational treatment.  How far her influence on behalf of the imprisoned and insane was induced and fostered by the English Quakeress, was never fully known until after her death, when a most interesting letter, addressed to the children of Mrs. Fry, was published.  This letter was sent to them by Mr. John Venning, brother to Walter Venning, who had opened the correspondence, but who had, like the benevolent lady with whom it was maintained, “passed over to the majority.”  From this correspondence it was found that the Emperor and Empress of Russia, the Princess Sophia Mestchersky, Prince Galitzin, and many ladies of high rank, had been stirred up to befriend those who had fallen under the strong arm of the law, and to make their captivity more productive, if possible, of good results.

Not only so, but lunatics, more helpless than prisoners, had been cared for, as the outcome of Mrs. Fry’s visits to St. Petersburg, and her communications with the powers that were at that era.  With these preliminary words of explanation, the subjoined letter speaks for itself:—­

I cheerfully comply with your desire to be furnished with some of the most striking and useful points contained in your late beloved mother’s correspondence with myself in Russia, relative to the improvement of the Lunatic Asylum in St. Petersburg.  I the more readily engage in this duty, because I am persuaded that its publication may, under the Lord’s blessing, prove of great service to many such institutions on the Continent, as well as in Great Britain....  I begin by stating that her correspondence was invaluable, as regarded the treatment and management of both prisoners and insane people.  It was the fruit of her own rich practical experience communicated with touching simplicity, and it produced lasting benefits to these institutions in Russia.  In 1827, I informed your dear mother that I had presented to the Emperor Nicholas a statement of the defects of the Government Lunatic Asylum, which could only be compared to our own old Bedlam in London, fifty years since; and that the dowager Empress had sent for me to the Winter Palace, when she most kindly, and I may say, joyfully, informed me that she and her august son, the Emperor, had visited together this abode of misery.  They were convinced of the necessity, not only of having a new building, but also of a complete reform in the management of the insane; and further that the Emperor had requested her to take it under her own care, and to