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There was not even an attempt at general inspection; the only rough separation of classes and degrees of guilt was that of the tried from the untried. They slept promiscuously in large companies. The hardening and bebasing executions were terribly frequent, and fresh prisoners were perpetually pouring in.

The good effected by the lady visitors was almost instantaneous. The most depraved and abandoned prisoners, with that hard-earned knowledge of the world they had earned by blood and tears, felt at once how pure and unselfish these ladies were. The most debased and cynical could discover only one motive for the conduct of those who brought the cup of cold water in His name. The stormiest heart was found still able to throb at a kind word, a pitying look, an act of kindness. The lowest of the criminals soon began to conform to the new standard; the scene changed; the worst women became quiet and gentle, orderly and industrious, neater and cleaner, their very countenances improved and softened. They would sit for hours with the ladies who visited Newgate, and behave with perfect decorum. Many learned to read; others became dexterous at knitting and needlework, all, by some means or another, were busily employed. Two of the committee, if possible, together, visited the prison daily, and became acquainted with the cases of individual prisoners. Women who had entered Newgate in rags or half naked, were decently clad, either by aid of their own earnings or at the expense of the association. The vilest grew more self-respecting. The prisoners' patchworks, spinning, and knitting were sold for them, and if possible part of their earnings set by to accumulate for their benefit when they returned to the world.

Schools were started for the children and for the grown-up women. The governesses were chosen from the more intelligent, and steady, and persevering of the prisoners. A capital system of supervision was also established: Over every twelve or thirteen women a matron was placed, who was answerable for their work, and kept an account of their conduct. A ward woman attended to the cleanliness of the wards, a yard woman maintained good order in the yards, and the sick-room was ruled by a nurse and an assistant. These officers were selected from the most orderly and respectable of the prisoners, and they received extra emolument. These situations were great

incitements to good conduct. The female prisoners assembled every morning in the committee room to hear the Bible, and sometimes a prayer, read by the matron or one of the visitors. The women on being dismissed, returned to their several employments, says Mr. Gurney, with uniform order and quietness.

Who can tell how far this extraordinary change in the female prisoners of Newgate was real? The outward result there was no disputing. The women became especially honest among themselves. In no less than one hundred thousand manufactured articles of work not one was stolen. Even a still more satisfactory proof of the good effected was the great decrease in the number of recommitments, only four prisoners having been reconvicted from 1817 to 1819; these criminals on their return evincing a strong sense of uneasiness and shame. Many of the poor women who left were kept under supervision by members of the committee, and were found to preserve a good character, obtaining places as servants, or earning an honest livelihood at home. Several of the women on their discharge received small loans to help them forward, and these loans they repaid by most punctual weekly instalments. At the end of 1817 a return was made, at the request of the benevolent T. F. Buxton, of the recommitments on the "male side" of Newgate. It then appeared that, out of two hundred and three men, forty-seven of those convicted had been confined there before within the two preceding years. The returns on the female side since the Ladies' Association civilised that part of the prison, are not more, as compared with the male side, than as four are to forty-seven. Before the angels of mercy came in Quaker garb, the returns on the female side used to be, compared with those of the male side, as three are to five. And all these great results are the effect of a little kindness, and a little Christian charity.

DROWNED.

A MAIDEN on a summer eve

Stood watching at the place of tryst, For him who came not; till at last Uprose from earth, the night's chill mist; And wistfully she fixed her eyes Upon the pale stars in the skies.

The lindens shivered in the breeze,

The cold East breeze, though it was June, As sometimes an Eolian harp,

Sounds one false concord out of tune;
And o'er her heart, there crept a chill,
A prescience of coming ill.

The white owl hooted his refrain,

Weird prophet, from the ivied tower; The jackdaw, from the belfry loft,

Echoed the striking of the hour.
Ten strokes! And with a tear-stained face,
Homeward her way she 'gan to trace.

Drowned! he was drowned that afternoon,
Drowned in the loveliest of spots,
Upon the silver breast of Thames,
"Amid the blue forget-me-nots.
For her, the maiden, all but wife,
Went out, that eve, the star of life!

OUR HALL.

WE are proud of our Hall, looking upon it as one of the features of London, and a place of favourite resort for visitors from the provinces. It is not a vestry-hall, though from time to time there are delivered in it speeches as full of sound and fury, and as significant of nothing, as are bawled forth in any parochial parliament. It is not, strictly speaking, according to the common acceptation of the term, a music-hall, though in it the best works of the greatest masters are constantly performed by the most finished executants. It is not a floral-hall, though in it we have seen a splendid display of fruit and flowers, nor a dining-hall, though the lively turtle, who gambol in its lower windows, are sacrificed and eaten within, nor a discussion-hall, nor a temperance-hall, nor a medical-hall, which seems to be modern English for a chemist's shop. Its uses are various. When Miss Norah O'Flaherty gives her annual concert on St. Patrick's Day-on which occasion such numbers of her gallant countrymen rally round her to cheer the national airs strung together in the Och Hubbaboo Quadrille-she hires our Hall for the purpose. When the Reverend Thrashem Wigg pours out the vials of his wrath on the gaily-dressed lady who dwells in the city erected on seven hills, nothing smaller than our Hall can contain the ladies and gentlemen who flock in from Clapham, to glory in the denunciation of the lady in question, and of the old gentleman in the skull cap, who is her aider and abettor. Readers, entertainers, concert givers, people who go about with giants and dwarfs, and who used to be called showmen, but who are now euphuistically styled "entrepreneurs," promoters of fancy fairs, and horticultural shows, billiard champions, and everybody who has anything to exhibit or expound, and who require a handsome, large, and fashionably situated location-all come to our Hall, which was expressly built to suit their wants. For our Hall is the St.

To

James's Hall, in Piccadilly, and winter and summer, spring and autumn, day and night, there is something going on there. Let us take the winter season first. the average London man, who takes his pleasures with a proper amount of tranquillity, there is perhaps no period of the year more thoroughly enjoyable than that between Christmas and Easter. Then the vigour gained during his autumnal holiday is still fresh within him; he has been for a long time separated from his acquaintances, and even the dullest of them will probably have stolen some tolerably new idea; he has been snipe-shooting in Ireland, or hunting in the shires, or travelling abroad in the wildest and most primitive parts available, and he returns to the charms of civilisation with increased appreciation and infinite gusto. Then comes the cosey dinner, either at the club or with a small, well-selected party (you can never get just the people you want during the season), with the firelight and the candle-light gleaming off plate and glass, throwing a pleasant glow on surrounding pictures and furniture, and shedding everywhere an air of comfort, infinitely superior to all the elegance of flower and fruit decoration to be met with later on. Then is the time to nestle in the comfortable stall or the snug private box. Then is the time when certain columns of the newspapers teem with advertisements, announcing the return to England of some of the most distinguished members of the musical profession, and when the professionals themselves can be heard at their freshest and their best, before they are hand-benumbed, brain-weary, or voice-worn by the exigencies of the London season.

Five minutes to eight o'clock on a damp, misty, muggy, January night. The Regentstreet entrance to St. James's Hall blocked with vehicles, cabs for the most part, but with a good sprinkling of private carriages; very few rakish broughams, but the family landau, with the footman, whose great-coat never fits him; the roomy clarence, set off by the silver-hat-banded page-boy; and the common domestic fly, which seems to have long since given up pretending to be a private vehicle, are here in every variety. Stand aside while Mrs. Pocklington Snodby and the two Miss Snodbys, who have been for the last three quarters of an hour boxed up in their carriage on their way from Clapham Park, slither over the greasy pavement, and are received at the door by

young Mr. Gossett, of Wood-street, E.C.,
who has been dining at his club, the
Junior Patagonian, and faultlessly attired,
lavender gloved and flower button-holed,
is waiting to escort the ladies up the stairs.
Room now if you please for little Lady
Quibbs, pleasantest, brightest, kindliest of
women. If you
know anything of the
musical world, and are anything like a
decent age, you will recollect Lady Quibbs
when she was Miss Lavrock, long before
she married Sir Parker Quibbs, K.C.B.,
when she and her sister used to sing at
public dinners and the nobility's concerts,
when they gave lessons in Bulstrode-street,
Manchester-square, when Mrs. Von Bomm
used regularly to lend them her big draw-
ing-rooms in Harley-street for their annual
concert, and when they were worked hard
and struggled bravely, and out of their
little savings had always a guinea to spare
for any miserable member of "the pro-
fession." Lucy Lavrock is dead now, and
Martha is Lady Quibbs, rich and happy,
though childless; she now works as hard
at doing good as she used to do in teaching
singing, is the most modest, unassuming,
dearest little Lady Bountiful that ever
lived, and is still so devoted to music that
you may be sure of finding her wherever
anything good is to be heard. Let us
mingle with the crowd which, steadily in-
creasing in bulk, has been ever passing
onwards while we have been waiting here,
and which is composed of ladies and gen-
tlemen, most of whom are in evening dress;
let us go
with them up the stairs and take
our chance of the amusement in store for
us. It may be that we shall see those sable
minstrels, whose curiously and constantly
repeated boast it is that they have never
played out of London. We may have the
luck to behold Mr. Farquhar Flote's
London Life, in which that distinguished
entertainer dives under the table every five
minutes, and swims to the surface again in
quite a different character; or to hear Mr.
Stentor read a selection from the Ballads
of British Bagmen. No, a different fate is
ours; when we arrive at the top of the
staircase we follow on into the great hall,
and, from a programme which is placed in
our hands, we learn that one of the series
of instrumental and vocal performances,
known as the Monday Popular Concerts,
is about to commence.

or cough when the programme was once entered upon, we will take advantage of the few moments left us to look around. The hall seems full in every part. In the stalls the people are rustling and nodding, and getting rid of any superfluous excitement before settling down into that severe decorum which classical music always demands; in the galleries, where morning dress is for the most part the rule, they are taking off coats and cloaks, and seeing how the music-books with which many of the occupants are provided can be wielded with the smallest amount of inconvenience, while from immediately behind the grand piano on the platform to the boundary wall, the orchestra is black with human beings ranged in semicircles above each other, tier after tier.

Any of one's acquaintances in the stalls? Several of course. The small wiry gentleman with the thin beardless cheeks, the bright sunken eye, the close-cropped hair, is Mr. Justice Judex, now the dignified and impartial judge, erst the bold and brilliant advocate, the lucid reasoner, the silver-tongued orator, the wary tactician in debate. Throughout his life he has been foremost in everything; in the hunting-field and the boudoir he has been as much at home as on the bench; but music is the one passion of his life to which he has been most constant. During the whole of the day just past he has been listening to interminable arguments, wearying in themselves, yet requiring the keenest attention, the most evenly-balanced intellect; now, two minutes after the first notes of the opening quintet strike upon his ear, you will see him leaning back in his chair, his chin resting on his hand, his whole soul rapt, enchanted, beatified. What to him are sittings in banco and rules nisi? What to him Themis in comparison with Euterpe? What to him the double-handed sword of justice in comparison with the horsehair bow with which M. Piatti is extracting such ravishing sounds? Through the mind of that man, softened and atuned by Mozart's wondrous melodies, what reminiscences may float! Thoughts of the times ere he made his first coup, when he was young and briefless, and sat in his shabby chambers awaiting the attorneys who would not come; perhaps even at days earlier than that of the cathedral city on the bright and shining river where As, from the determined aspect of the his boyhood was passed, and where he people in the immediate neighbourhood of would sit much as he sits now, fascinated our stalls, we should probably be instantly and entranced by the playing of the orput to death if we ventured to move, speak,ganist or singing of the anthem.

The tall man sitting next to him is Mr. Frank Farrance, of the Home Office, who has been dining with Mr. Justice Judex, and who, while liking good dinners, and proud to be taken notice of by his companion, does not care much for music, and occupies himself in making eyes at the governess in Mr. Hoddinott's family, who are seated close by. Great patrons of music are the Hoddinotts: the eldest daughter, Jemima, having, under the pseudonym of Aimée, composed several ballads, and the youngest son, with the long hair and spectacles, being shrewdly suspected of being the Wolfgang, who withers the musical world in the columns of the Highbury Warder. And the Hebraic element is omnipresent; the De Lypeys, of Tavistock-square, and the Van Sheens, of Woburn-place, fill up an entire row, and sit, the males some curly and some bald, the females some flat-banded, some frizzed, some ringleted, but all bland, shiny, and oleaginous, beating time and grunting deeply. Little Mr. Moss, the lawyer from Thavies Inn, is there too, and with him Mr. Moysey, the diamond merchant from Amsterdam. As a rule, the female denizens of the stalls are not pretty, the male occupants of the fauteuils are not young-but all are intensely interested in what is going on, and join together in silencing any one who may dare to speak with a deep and prolonged hish-h-h. The same preoccupation and interest are noticeable in the galleries, where the people are much of the ordinary stamp of theatrical audiences, many of those amongst them who are supposed to be in evening dress wearing the skimpy little red opera-cloaks and the feeble artificial flower so much in vogue with the frequenters of the dresscircle when the pieces played are not attractive, but it is in the audience seated in the orchestra that the spectator will find his chief cause for speculation and wonderment.

morning and tramp about from house to house, bearing neglect, insolence, contumely -the rage of spoiled children, the insults of vulgar parents, the contempt of pam pered servants-who hammer away from hour to hour at the rudiments of French and English, who strike the scarcely responsive notes of the dull piano with listless finger, and who, from year's end to year's end, are running up and down the scales, practising the eternal Czerny's exercises, and the immortal "A vous dirai-je." In this series of concerts, and one or two others equally good and equally cheap, lies the sole recreation in which these good people indulge. There they come, arriving at the same time, sitting, as I am told, nearly always in the same places, following note by note all that is played or sung in the music-books which they have brought with them; enrapt during the performance, enthusiastic at its close. The male denizens of the orchestra are, for the most part, of the same rank in life: small clerks and shopmen, who, with other tastes, would be found in the music-hall or in the billiardsaloon, but who, curiously enough, seem to prefer the dreamy Glück to the Jolly Bash, the sonata in A major to the spot stroke. Here and there are traces of a foreign element among them, but the majority are poor, simple, hard-working English people. The remainder of the audience in the orchestra is recruited from the ranks of the enthusiasts. Real “fanatici per la musica" they would rather pay stall price for a seat in the orchestra, than a shilling for the best stall in the hall. They can hear, it is true, in the body of the hall. But in the orchestra they can also see. They can watch Herr Joachim's nimble bow, they can greedily survey fingering of Madame Arabella Goddard, and of Mr. Charles Hallé, and if any of these incomparable artists were to trip or stumble (though, to be sure, the idea is preposterous) the orchestra enthusiasts would be the first to note and to shudder at the awful fact.

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There is no attempt at evening dress here; the muddy boots of most of the men, the draggled dresses of many of the women, show that they have walked hither in their As you enter, either from Piccadilly or work-a-day clothes, probably straight from Regent-street (for our Hall has two ap their labours, to this their greatest recrea- proaches, though the first-named can tion. A shilling is the sum which each has scarcely be looked upon as worthy of it), paid for admission, and the most casual ob- you will have noticed among the mural servation would show that in many cases it advertisements a certain number of print was certainly as much as could be afforded. portraits of gentlemen attired in faultless Here are pale, worn-looking women, gover-evening costume, with great development nesses by the day, the half-day, the hour, of shirt-cuff and watch-chain. who leave their mean lodgings in the early gentlemen, who are also remarkable for

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their heads of hair, and for their very thick moustaches, are the principals in the band of nigger minstrels, which has been so long and so deservedly popular. There is a stern, truculent, punch-your-head kind of expression in the portraits, which you can scarcely reconcile with the tender warbling of "Dey've laid her 'neath de gooseberry-bush," or the more pointed satire of "Wake up, ole Sal." But it is, perhaps, the burnt cork which softens and refines all. Anyhow, it is certain that these minstrels, who, clever singers though they be, would certainly not have proved attractive for so long had they preserved their natural appearance, have been stationary at our Hall for years, and seldom or never sing to any but a full room. This is probably due to the fact that they appeal to that large class of the public which, while musically uneducated, takes delight in soft and simple melodies; that the tenor voices are exceptionally pure and sweet, and that the harmony of the chorus is excellent. It is to be regretted that the words of the ballads are very much inferior to the music, and that the endeavour to give local colour destroys the sentiment which is evidently intended. For instance, when one hears a singer utter something like the following:

Dey've laid her 'neath de gooseberry-bush,
By de ole plantation's side,

De 'possum and de jackal sing

A requiem o'er my bride;

De alligator swims around,

De walrus is at play,

But my love will nebber more be found, I've lost my charming May. CHORUS-Lost! lost! my May, my charming, charming May, &c.

manner.

it is impossible to be much affected, however sympathetic may be, the voice and As for the comic songs, they are about as ghastly as the usual run of such ditties, but the conversations between Mr. Bones and his chief are by no means unamusing, more especially when they climax, after an immense amount of yuck-yucking and buffoonery, in the chief's suddenly dignified rebuke, "Come, sir, no more of this-Gentle Annie!"

Also in the winter, in our Hall, take place the great billiard-matches, at which both money and reputation are at stake, and which are attended by all the principal supporters of this now extraordinarily popular game. The matches are held sometimes in the large hall, but when that is occupied, in a large square apartment situate in a remote corner of this apparently inexhaustible building of ours. Tiers of seats surround

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the apartment for the spectators, while in the centre of the room is a splendid billiard-table, on either side of which stand Crook and Dobbin, the antagonists, both young men, remarkably well got up, in evening dress, and with their coats off, looking like two gentlemen in a club dressing-room about to wash their hands previous to dinner. The audience is an assemblage of heterogeneous particles; men from the "Rag," and other military clubs, men who once belonged to the " Rag,' but who have now faded away into provincial towns, where they loaf their lives away in the billiard-rooms attached to the hotels, and try to add to their narrow incomes by pool practice. Keen-eyed men these, watching every stroke with intense interest, intent on "picking up wrinkles,” and savagely objurgant against noise and interruption of the play. Men about town, calm, cool, and insouciant, and lads from the universities successfully copying their dress, and unsuccessfully aping their manners; hunting-men from the shires, up in town on account of the frost, frequenters of Tattersall's, and the usual selvage and fringe of openly-professed discounters, and attorneys lending money in secret, which always attends the meetings of any portion of the sporting world. Dotted here and there amidst this motley crew are one or two characters who, if they were recognised, would be thought oddly out of place; an amateur artist of renown, a contributor of dreamy philosophical articles to a weighty periodical, a hard-headed civil engineer, who is so much in demand one would have thought every minute of his time had been absorbed by his profession; there they are, apparently as intent upon the game as the reporter of the Sporting Press, who makes a memorandum of every telling stroke in his note-book. There is plenty of drinking and smoking, but the game is carried on with perfect decorum, and almost in silence. Loud betting was at one time the practice, but it interfered with the comfort of the players, and was put a stop to; now, occasionally, an enthusiastic gentleman will intimate his desire to back his opinion by holding up his five or ten fingers to a friend on the opposite side of the room, who responds with promptitude, and the bet is booked. What newspaper reporters of a police case indicate by "sensation," is expressed after a failure which should have been a success by a prolonged murmur of "a-a-ah," and a specially clever stroke is loudly applauded.

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