in contact with each other. But they are distant, and so in reality, are those who live by virtue and those who suffer for crime. We must never confound virtue and vice, simply because the vicious man has some latent virtues, and the virtuous man may have to contend against some vices. The desirable point is, that as the virtuous are always on the road to improvement, so also to place the vicious on the same track. The latter may not appear to have approached very near the goal-but does any one know how distant was his starting point-how far he has already come? These considerations should influence the one who is seeking the reformation of prisoners. The convict should feel -feel in every part, that his keeper sympathizes in his condition, that he is not one of those perfect ones who come to a cell to gratify a morbid curiosity, or to discharge a hastily assumed duty-a duty that too often seems to be fully discharged by the visit-and not by that which the visit permits and the law enjoins.

The great difficulty is, and must ever be, in this branch of the question, to find a man who combines the qualities of the knowledge of administration, order, precision, and fidelity to employers that shall satisfy the law with regard to the safe keeping and fair treatment of the public prisoner, and the proper direction of the affairs of the public prison, with that pure philanthropy which makes a knowledge of these things, and the ability to discharge them, means of really improving the moral condition of the convict, and making him feel that he is rated as one who though he has shown power and will to do wrong, has in him the great faculties of

doing right, and that there is confidence that he not only can but that he will do right.

What is meant is that it is required that the headkeeper of a prison, whatever may be his designation, should feel that there is entrusted to him the great work of keeping and teaching prisoners-of punishing and amending the convicted felon; and as surely answering for attempts, at least, towards making him better, as for efforts to keep him safe.

We should not think very highly of a physician to a hospital who should report his patients dead or discharged unimproved-and demand commendation for those services that had prevented the sufferers from surreptitiously leaving the hospital. It is as much a part of the office of the hospital physician to cure the physical ailment of his patients, as it is to detain them in their wards. But it will be said that "the patient is sent to the hospital to be healed of physical infirmities, and that his detention is only for the cure of his disease, not the punishment, only a consequence." Well, that is true, but formerly there was no hospital, and the leper and the others who had contagious diseases were left to themselves till death relieved them of their suffering, and society of their dangerous contact. Public feeling has been influenced by pure humanity, and a change has been wrought, so that the wretch, who has by his vices brought upon himself some of the worst evils that flesh is heir to, may plead his humanity at the door of the hospital, and he will not only be kept there that society may not be annoyed by his loathsome presence, but he will be physically dealt with so that

on his discharge society will have nothing to fear from his contact. This change in the appreciation and treatment of the physical sufferer is well understood, and a similar change has been going on in public sentiment with regard to the moral leper; he is to be shut out of the way as he formerly was, the consequence of his moral disease, and that society may not suffer by the operation of that "moral disease"-but the hospital to which he is assigned must now have in it the means and the ministers of cure. He must not be discharged because he has been detained the assigned period, but his egress must suppose some success in the moral application of the means for his improvement. Public opinion is working, then, this change just as assuredly as public opinion and true philanthropy provided hospitals for the sick and asylums for the orphans. And that public opinion, in the case of prisons, may influence as it has influenced in the case of hospitals and asylums, we must have administrators suited to the new requirements and able and willing to work the reformation of the prisoner as they are to secure his imprisonment.

It may be said that "it will, at first, be difficult to find 'wardens' and 'head-keepers' who contain in themselves the qualities necessary to administer the law with regard to the detention, the feeding, and the employment, as well as to make the prison a place of reform."

We will not say that such a difficulty does existthat such men are scarce; and as there has been no demand for them, men who may possess gifts for such a combination of power are not aware of their own

abilities, and the public are unable to say who could do the work, not having seen it attempted. But this we can say, that as soon as the duty of reformation is recognized, and provision made for the discharge of that duty, the labors of the head of the prison, if he be unequal to the double task, will be supplemented by volunteer laborers till the full preparation is had for a single director. Let the duty, the necessity for improvement, be admitted, and all else be provided for, and the power will not be absent. The importance of the work established and the time secured, the man will not be wanted.

Men for all duties of humanity are always about. It requires some discernment to detect the capabilities of certain persons, and it takes some art to bring out their talents and adapt them to immediate wants, but they do exist. They may be discovered-and they can be, as they have been, educed-and applied, just as the artist knows that in the block of marble before him there lies enveloped a splendid form of beauty or force, female loveliness or manly strength, and it is his business to bring it forth. The block might have served for the step of some common door; it is made to adorn the galleries of wealth and art. The man might have sat for years at the door of a cell, and whispered consolation and monition into the ear of the repentant convict-the necessity for higher service leads others to discern in him the capabilities of raising the place of punishment into the home of reformation.

We repeat it, whenever it shall be admitted that the great end of human punishment is to make better the punished, then, and, perhaps, not till then, will the man

be found who can lead the discipline of the prison by affectionate firmness. He will be the man who loves his fellow-men, and who evinces his faith in the gentle government of his kind by practising self-control.

We come naturally to another important consideration of the government and discipline of a prison.

Having procured a principal, such as we have supposed in the preceding paragraph, we find that we have begun at the right end. A full knowledge of, and a proper disposition towards, the governing of prisoners, suppose in the principal another very important qualification in that officer, viz., the selection and direction. of subordinates. That is vastly important. Hundreds who are able and willing, often anxious, to discharge all the duties of the position of assistants, or keepers, have not the ability to govern their own tempers; have, indeed, never been informed that such a government was proper; never attempted any such control, unless under the powerful application of a stronger man's blows; never heard, and, therefore, never attempted to put into practice, the wise man's instruction, his hint as to the power of him "who hath control over his own spirit."

The law allows the keepers to punish prisoners, and, in some instances, the permission is useful, and the keeper properly avails himself of the liberty. But the wise superior will carefully hold in his own hands the means and instruments of punishment, because he intends to make that punishment, or a recognition of the deserving of the punishment, a means of improvement. In the hands of the subordinate, the infliction reaches the first end, viz., punishment; in the hands of the