love of pleasure and of the world seemed gone."

On a visit to London she quite deliberately tried her new emotions by the test of dinners, dances, routs, theatres, and visits to Mrs. Siddons and Mrs. Inchbald; but most of these appeared to her as guilty pleasures, and she went back to Norwich and "adopted the rigid Quaker garments, and became what was styled a 'plain Friend." " Her six sisters, who were good girls, but fond of music and a turn in the ballroom, were a little scandalised, and there was friction in the family. Presently the sisters were very sorry, for Elizabeth married and went away; and their curious little diaries show that, for all their girlish differences, they were a most devoted Quaker family. Elizabeth's husband (she married him in 1800) was Joseph Fry, a substantial London banker, who gave her a luxurious home, first in St. Mildred's Court, City, and afterwards at Plashet House, Essex. They were blessed with many children, and Elizabeth was to the full as happy in her wedded life as she had been among the six healthy romps at Norwich.

But she was as serious as ever, and albeit in no sense a fanatic of the strict sect she clung to, her manifest zeal prompted the brethren to choose her as one of their "ministers." After she had subdued her natural nervousness she spoke occasionally; never unless she were moved to do

so, and always with a powerful effect upon her hearers. There was something fragrant about her, as well as magnetic; and her presence and bearing, so fine and so chaste, with the added charm of the delicate and demure yet appealing Quaker garb, must have been impressive in the extreme. This is a remarkable pen portrait that we have of her from the eighth Duke of Argyll :—

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She was the only really very great human being I have ever met with whom it was impossible to be disappointed. She was in the fullest sense of the word a majestic woman. It was impossible not to feel some awe before her, as before some superior being. I understood in a moment the story of the prisonsthe words that came to my mind when I saw her were, 'The peace of God that passeth all understanding.'

With this to aid us, we too may imagine something of “the story of the prisons.' The story opens in 1813, and lies, therefore, just a hundred years behind us. In 1813 Stephen Grellet and William Forster, paying a philanthropic visit to Newgate, were so horrified by what they saw in the women's wards that Grellet went at once" to his friend, Elizabeth Fry, and appealed to her to do something for the poor suffering creatures. This led her, in the company of one lady, a sister of Sir Fowell Buxton's, to pay her first visit to Newgate."

They found "about three hundred women, with their numerous children, crowded together, without classification or employment of any kind, in the custody of one man and his son. They cooked, they washed, and slept on the floor. When any stranger appeared they clamoured for money, with which, if given, they purchased liquors from a tap in the prison. The screaming and terrible language, the fighting and lawlessness were such that the governor, we are told, never entered without great reluctance.'

With what "reluctance" the saintly and nervous Quakeress entered, we may fancy; but in she stepped, and presently found her voice, that voice which no one ever heard unmoved. By and by a great silence fell in the ward, and when this was broken it was by sounds of passionate weeping; the seed was already being watered. "I heard "I heard weeping," says Elizabeth Fry, "and thought they appeared much tendered, for a very solemn quiet was observed. It was a striking scene, the poor people on their knees around us in their deplorable condition." She adds, what we may well believe, that the impression of this first visit remained with her through life.

We cannot linger over these fascinating scenes. Elizabeth Fry gave proof very soon that, if deeply emotional, she was also sincerely practical. She first formed a school in the prison; this

succeeding greatly, she went gradually forwardhelped by other heroic women-to introduce "order, industry, and religious feeling." The female prisoners had never been tended by one of their own sex. Mrs. Fry obtained the appointment of a matron, who had wardresses to assist her. Work was distributed; rules were drafted, and the prisoners undertook to obey them. A single month wrought changes scarcely credible, and the changed order passed into the settled order. "Very soon,' says an earlier writer, "the female side of Newgate became quite a show." This was the beginning of all real reform among women imprisoned in this country.

The golden example of the grand Quaker woman travelled into the provinces, into Scotland, into Ireland. It was borne overseas, into France, Germany, Italy, and Russia. In all these countries a new spirit of kindness and charity began to steal through the dark places where women lay in bondage. Everywhere throughout the world woman in prison has been quite as grievously entreated as man has been; it was Elizabeth Fry who first brought shame on our hearts for this.

Her prison work was not all. She had her part in the emancipation of the slave, and we may say with all but literal truth that she originated nursing

Her frequent attendance at the bedside of the sick and suffering made her realise the need for a class of well-educated and refined women, with thorough medical training, to nurse the sick. To see what ought to be done was for Mrs. Fry to do it. She consulted her sister-inlaw, Mrs. Samuel Gurney, and together they founded the pioneer institution for nurses, still existing in Bishopsgate. When Florence

Nightingale went out to the Crimean War on her beautiful mission, she took the nurses with her from Mrs. Fry's institution."

The praise of Elizabeth Fry needs, I think, scarcely any circumscription. With what reservations need we qualify it? She stands up serene and beautiful, strong and calm, and full of loving kindness. The intense religion that she walks by is "light to the blind, speech to the dumb, and feet to the lame," and there is in it nothing proud, nothing narrow, nothing harsh. Her memory is as a rock that violets and lilies cluster on.

as ever.

But Newgate was soon in almost as bad a way Howard's work was done, and Elizabeth Fry's, and the new Prison Society had attempted somewhat, and committees of the Lords and the Commons had stated cases for consideration. The report of the two first inspectors of prisons, Mr. William Crawford and the Rev. Whitworth Russell, in 1835-6, reveals an astonishing con