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I prisoner must calculate on gaolers being generous, for they owned few virtues not written in their rules." I spoke from experience, and gave them cases in point. ' During the latter portion of my time all my friends were denied access to me,f which, though it interfered with the supply oi my wants, I did not, for the reasons stated, much regret. But this I did regret—all my letters were detained, and I was refused the privilege of writing a single letter to my family. The reason assigned by the governor for this was the enforcement of new rules, but I know that they were enforced without proper authority, and I believe applied only to me.J ' Those are happy who are for ever preserved from the reception cells of Gloucester Gaol. Of the one in which I was put, the floor was filthy, the bed was filthier, and the window was filthier still, for in the window was—what I sicken at while I write—a rag full of human excrement. And of the bed, a prisoner assured me that when he lay in it the lice crept up his throat off the corners of the blanket which covered him. This statement, on my direction, he made to the commissioners. ' The gaol chapel is a cold place. Often, on entering it, I have exclaimed, with Jugnrtha, on entering his Roman dungeon— " Heavens! how cold is this bath of yours I" Yet in this place, during this inclement season, the prisoners are assembled every morning to hear prayers, on empty stomachs, after sixteen hours' confinement in their ni Jit. cells. On the " long prayer " mornings, they are detained in chapel three-quarters of an hour, and the penitentiary men, on their return to their cells, find their gruel on the stone floor, gone cold in theirabsence. I mention this matter with reluctance, as some may suppose that I notice it only from want of religi...
