males what those houses of refuge still are for females-places of probation between the prison and the world, where the convict is expected to give proof that he deserves to be free before he is trusted with freedom. Employers being, as yet, prejudiced against discharged convicts, the State undertakes to employ them, and their labour has already proved remunerative. The net cost of one hundred "intermediate" men is less than the value of their labour by £236 68. The total expenditure upon their annual maintenance, including the salaries of officers, gratuities to the men on their discharge, only amounts to £1,072 128., while their labour for twenty-six weeks, valued at 9s. per week, and the more productive labour of six of the warders, who give their labour to the public as carpenters, artificers, &c., amounts to a total of £1,308 188., leaving a balance of more than twenty per cent. of profit.

*

We have thus cursorily described the three periods of purgation through which the Irish convict has to pass. We will not call this system the "Purgatory of Prisoners" as the Rev. Orby Shipley does in a wellmeaning but over-theological pamphlet on the subject. As we know nothing of the intermediate state of spirits we will not argue, as the deacon in the diocese of Oxford does from the unknown to the known. We prefer to keep the question of Irish Convict Prisons on terra firma. Mr. Hill makes a much more modest and sensible comparison. The seclusion of Mountjoy (which Mr. Hill pleasantly reminds us is a lucus a non lucendo) marks the winter of the prisoner's course Spike Island represents his spring-time while the intermediate prison is his summer, with the glad sunshine of coming release to cheer him, and active and profitable employment to warm and ripen his reformed character. That a considerable number of those who pass through these three seasons in prison at last attain an autumn-home of honest industry, is the most cheering thing of all, and the value of this success is not destroyed by the fact, that a proportion of the patients prove incorri

gible, and a few relapse into crime. No system will ever prevent this.

Captain Crofton, with a caution which cannot be too highly commended, sets down the actual amount of reformed convicts at seventy-five per cent. of the whole. It will be matter of no little satisfaction if the Irish convict system be found effective to this extent. It would, indeed, be a great work to raise even a small per centage of our greater criminals by successive stages, from various states and degrees of brutality, to the full privileges of citizenship, as reformed and released convicts. That some few cannot be brought with any amount of care through the three stages of repentance already elucidated, is not to be wondered at. Of these we can only say in the words of Mr. Hill," Let the small minority remain, and if death is to arrive before repentance, let them remain for life." We scarcely think it necessary, after what we have already said, to remind our readers that this system still partakes of the nature of an experiment; but we lay before them facts, tending not only to elucidate its nature, but to show that it has even now been successful to such a degree as to warrant the hope, at least, that it contains the germ of the most effective treatment for criminals.

The State, acting on Christian principles, and believing that it owes a duty to Him who came to seek and to save that which was lost, has resolved not only to protect society against criminals by stern punishment, but also to solve the problem, whether men steeped in sensuality and debased by crime can be saved to themselves and society. If, when criminals have been passed through three purifying stages, seventy-five per cent. of good metal be found in the mass, the new system is no longer an experiment. The success is marked. Reasoning from this basis, we dare to predict that in the course of some years the results of the Irish convict prison system will be seen in a calendar of crime for Ireland reduced to the minimum to which human effort can ever hope to diminish it.

WE have often thought that a work of no ordinary interest might be written upon the historical and biographical associations which are connected with the world's few great books. Take Aristotle and Plato, for instance. What a multitude of recollections are entwined with their writings, if we confine ourselves only to the revival of European literature consequent upon the taking of Constantinople, and the few antecedent and subsequent centuries. The deep and dense ignorance of the Latin Church-the literary splendour of Mahommedanism-the philosophy of Aristotle, filtered to Christendom through two layers of Arabic and Latin-the Platonic ardour of Marsilio Ficino, founding, under Cosmo de Medici, a univer

sity of Platonic idealism in Florence

the lordly philosophic romance of John Pico, of Mirandola, projecting a tournament and festival of philosophers at Rome, in which he was to defend nine hundred Platonic theses against all comers, whose expenses he would pay from any distance the great antagonist of Peripateticism, Peter Ramus, assassinated, disembowelled, and dragged through the streets of Paris on the night of St. Bartholomew, not so much because he was suspected of being a Huguenot, as because he was known to be a Platonist-the pale and visionary brow of Giordano Bruno (the poet of that Pantheistic system of absolute unity of which Spinoza is the geometrician)* looking upon us from the fire in the

Champs de Flore, before the theatre of Pompey-the tall and erect figure of the elder Scaliger, his royal and august face, bronzed with the suns and storms of many campaigns, now bent over the words, "sweeter than nectar, clearer than the sun," of Aristotle ;-these, and a thousand other thoughts and shadows, arise before him who contemplates the "torsolike" volumes of Aristotle, or the immortal pages of Plato. We commend our idea to some one who is both a philosopher and historian, and yet not utterly deficient in imagination.

Still, placing at the highest the influences and associations connected with the writings of these intellectual monarchs, under whose banners it has been said that every mind may be ranged, how few and feeble are they compared with the influences which cluster round every portion of the Inspired Volume! Let us imagine, that in the process of science a book should be executed of such marvellous materials, that on blank leaves inserted for the purpose, the sunbeam should etch every face that hung over the page until it became a self-illustrated work, a magic gallery of pictured shadows. Something like this is the Bible read in the light of history and biography. In their radiance, it becomes a book from whose every page, and almost every text, the eyes of the great and sainted dead are looking into ours. Here, then, we find Photographs for our Bibles; and we purpose to give illustrations of Scripture by history and biography to adduce texts, or passages of the Bible, intertwined by the law of association, with historical names and events in the annals of the Christian Church.

The due development of this subject would require volumes. It would demand a knowledge of ecclesiastical history, for which the acquirements of Mr. Stanley, or our own elegant and learned Dr. Lee, would not be more than sufficient. Our readers will be content, however, if we group, almost at random, a few of those pictured shapes to which we have alluded-if we point out, and sketch, even with rough and hasty hand, a few of the faces which history has etched on the margin of Sacred Writ. To begin, then, at once, open the Bible, at the Fifty-first Psalm.

We may transport ourselves to the

fourth of February, 1555. Newgate Prison stands out dark and sullen in the winter morning. The streets that now barricade it the thoroughfare through which the cabs and omnibuses, and all the roaring waves of city life pass on to Temple-bar-were then like the straggling lines of houses in an overgrown village. The barred and stauncheoned windows were there even then, and a few stragglers were gazing up at them curiously. Grim old windows, they have shut in many a wild and guilty heart. Many an eye has looked at them almost all the long night, until the cold, grey morning paled between the bars. A few hours more, and the sea of heads surging underneath, and the fierce uplifted faces of men and women, come to see the execution, and the feet upon the iron platform, and the drop, and the quivering rope, and the excited whisper among the throng and the soul gone out to meet its God. But on the morning of which we speak we do not pass into the desperado's room, where the rogue, the highwayman, and murderer are congregated. There were then no gaol committees, no kind chaplains and lactometers, no prison discipline, no Mr. Halls and Captain Maconochies, no graduated dietary, no ventilation. Through the long passages, strewed with filthy rushes; through stenches, that of bad fish predominating stenches that feed fat the pestilence that walketh in darkness, we pass into a little cell. Pause at the iron cage with reverence. There is calmly sleeping the first champion of the Reformed Church, the first martyr of English Protestantism, John Rogers. A step glides into the room. It is the keeper's wife. The prisoner sleeps soundly, for he is at peace with God, and the angels are watching over his head. Awake, haste, prepare yourself for the fire.' "Then," says the martyr with a quiet smile, "if it be so, I need not tie my points." He is taken from Newgate, first to Bonner for degradation. He meekly beseeches a few words with his wife before the burning, but is answered with a scowl. Meanwhile, the procession is formed for Smithfield. The sheriffs walk along with their wands of office; the gruff halberdiers are there, trampling round the pinioned prisoner; priests from the Abbey, apprentices from the Fleet, yeo

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men from the Tower, merchants from the Change, watermen from the Strand, mingle with the crowd. But there is a sound of sobbing among them. A mother appears with a babe at her breast, and ten little ones going, and weeping by her side. It is the prisoner's wife. "Come, good John, a free pardon, and go home with thy honest wife and little ones; only renounce thy heresy." Patience, stout and godly heart. A few minutes more, and the pangs of death will be over; and the eyes will have opened on the land where there are no more tears, and the ransomed spirit have received the crown of life. Meanwhile, he can leave her nothing but that heart-touching paper found in a dark corner of his cell. "O God! be good to this poor and most honest wife, being a poor stranger; and all my little souls, her's and my children; whom, with all the whole faithful and true Catholic congregation of Christ, the Lord of life and death, save, keep, and defend in all the troubles and assaults of this vain world, and bring, at the last to everlasting salvation, the true and sure inheritance of all crossed Christians. Amen. Amen." But listen. A voice is hushing the noisy throng. It is a psalm which John Rogers sings as he goes. "Have mercy upon me, O God, according to thy loving kindness; wash me throughly from mine iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin. Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean; wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow."

Or, opening the Psalms again, almost at hazard, the Thirty-first attracts observation. To those who are intimately acquainted with the reign of Henry the Eighth, that Psalm may recall the fourth of May, 1535. On that day John Haughton, Prior of the Charter-house, was brought out to Tyburn to suffer for refusing to acknowledge the royal supremacy, as then defined. That noble face, of almost feminine beauty, was pale, but not with terror. The ropes that fastened him to the dreadful hurdle could not disguise the symmetry of his slight and graceful figure. That fair frame was animated by a gentle spirit. Haughton was not a Protestant; but to him, as to More and Fisher, every Protestant may afford a sigh. In an age when the vices of

the Romish priesthood cried to heaven for vengeance; when their most flagitious offences were expiated by a fine of a few shillings, or by carrying a taper in a procession; when the monasteries were full of men who had exchanged the hair shirt for fine linen, and a diet of bread or vegetables, with small beer or water, for fat capons, and big-bellied tuns of sherry and sack-Haughton set an example of severe virtue in his own person, and insisted upon regularity in the house over which he presided. The most Protestant of our historians is the one who has done the fullest justice to this Carthusian. His execution is historically remarkable, because it was the first occasion on which the dress of a Romish ecclesiastic was ever brought to the stake. This, one cannot regret; for it was a sign to the world that the domination of a foreign priesthood was over in England for ever, and that the minister of religion must exhibit the regularity, or pay the penalty of a citizen. But we may regret that, when the storm came, it swept away one of the few flowers of holiness that yet lingered on the mouldering walls of the English monasteries. As he knelt down on the scaffold his closing words were taken from the Thirty-first Psalm, verses one to five; with these words he made the last sign to the executioners.

Another recollection occurs to us in connexion with this Psalm. It is nearly forty years before the lastthe 22nd of May, 1498. This time the scene is not where the bloody arm of Haughton hung over the old archway of the Charterhouse; not in London, but in Florence. This May is not over the yellow Thames, but by the sunny Arno, under the blue sky of Italy. And the victim is Savonarola. Nine years before he had been preaching near this spot, in the garden of the cloister at San Marco, under a shrubbery of Damascus roses; and his subject had been the Revelation of St. John. Upon the assembled multitude, used to hear scraps of Aristotle and Plato, and the school logic, that pure scriptural exposition had fallen like spray-drops from the river of God; and as the preacher spoke of the love of Christ, the tears rolled along his cheeks, and the hardest hearts melted like snow. Not many years after,