whose shelves a bright pewter plate, a knife and fork and a wooden spoon.  In a drawer of this commode yellow soap and a comb and brush.  A grating down low for hot air to come in, if it likes, and another up high for foul air to go out, if it chooses.  On the wall a large placard containing rules for the tenant’s direction, and smaller placards containing texts from Scripture, the propriety of returning thanks after food, etc.; a slate and a couple of leathern kneeguards used in polishing the room.  And that is all.  But the deal furniture is so clean you might eat off it.  The walls are snow, the copper basin and the brass gaspipe glitter like red gold and pale gold, and the bed-hooks like silver hot from the furnace.  Altogether it is inviting at first sight.

To one of these snowy snug retreats was now ushered an acquaintance of ours, Tom Robinson.  A brief retrospect must dispose of his intermediate history.

When he left us he went to the county bridewell, where he remained until the assizes, an interval of about a month.  He was tried; direct evidence was strong against him, and he defended himself with so much ingenuity and sleight of intellect that the jury could not doubt his sleight of hand and morals, too.  He was found guilty, identified as a notorious thief, and condemned to twelve months’ imprisonment and ten years’ transportation.  He returned to the county bridewell for a few days, and then was shifted to the castellated building.

Tom Robinson had not been in jail this four years, and, since his last visit great changes had begun to take place in the internal economy of these skeleton palaces and in the treatment of their prisoners.

Prisons might be said to be in a transition state.  In some, as in the county bridewell Robinson had just left, the old system prevailed in full force.  The two systems vary in their aims.  Under the old, the jail was a finishing school of felony and petty larceny.  Under the new, it is intended to be a penal hospital for diseased and contagious souls.

The treatment of prisoners is not at present invariable.  Within certain limits the law unwisely allows a discretionary power to the magistrates of the county where the jail is; and the jailer, or, as he is now called, the governor, is their agent in these particulars.

Hence, in some new jails you may now see the non-separate system; in others, the separate system without silence; in others, the separate and silent system; in others, a mixture of these, i. e., the hardened offenders kept separate, the improving ones allowed to mix; and these varieties are at the discretion of the magistrates, who settle within the legal limits each jail’s system.

The magistrates, in this part of their business, are represented by certain of their own body, who are called “the visiting justices;” and these visiting justices can even order and authorize a jailer to flog a prisoner for offenses committed in jail.