roused herself (June, 1852) to be privately presented to the Queen, who, by my friend, the Duchess of Sutherland, desired ' to make my acquaintance.' This is the last event recorded by her pen. On the 20th of November following, at midnight, without a struggle, scarcely a sigh, she breathed her last, in her ninetieth year. This story of a life-for such it is, rather than what might be inferred from the title-page-is closed with taste and feeling by the Editor: 'With the lives of the sisters closed a society which will be ever remembered by all who frequented those pleasant little gatherings in Curzon Street. Sometimes a note, sometimes a word, and more often the lamp being lighted over the door, was taken as notice to attend, and, on entering, it might be to find only a few habitués, or a larger and more brilliant assembly. All that was uncertain; but it was certain to find the cordial welcome of the two genial, lively, well-dressed, distinguished-looking hostesses-the comfortable teatable, over which their friend Miss Anne Turner presided for years, and Lady Charlotte Lindsay, the third partner in the firm, clever and agreeable to the last. There was an absence of formality—a kindly mingling together of persons of various habits, pursuits, and positions in life, that tended to bring different portions of society together, as much as in other coteries there is a tendency to keep them apart; and when death had closed this little chapter in our social life, no one attempted, or, indeed, could have carried it on with equal success: their age, their experience in society, Miss Berry's acknowledged talent, their home-staying life, their absence of domestic duties and of family ties, all contributed to give them the power and the means which others have not, to do that which few would have done so well, under equally favourable circumstances. 'It has long been over, and death has set its seal on many who composed that society. A time must come to all, when the enjoy ment of the present, and the hopes of the future, cede their place to the memory of the past. We cannot renew what is gone. Happy are those who can look back to social pleasures, to useful toil, and to domestic happiness, and gratefully recall the time "when "such things were "!' We will not risk spoiling or weakening this most appropriate finale by amplification-by more last words. All we wish to add is that, thanks to the labour of love with which the memory of the founder of that society has been cherished and illustrated, her beneficial influence, her power of animating and improving by precept and example, will not perish with her. They are preserved, for all who are capable of understanding and appreciating her, by this book. ART. II.-1. Our Convicts. By MARY CARPENTER. 2 vols. London: 1864. 2. Memoirs of Jane Cameron-Female Convict. By a PRISON MATRON. 2 vols. London: 1864. A FTER all that has been published, in many forms, within a few years, we have never till now had the means placed before us of forming any true and complete conception of the distinctive life and character of the criminal class of our population. Miss Carpenter has at last supplied us with the material needed to qualify us so to understand the conditions of a life altogether unlike our own, as to enable us to perceive what sort of minds we have to deal with in our attempts to guard society from the evils of lawlessness. The main object of Miss Carpenter's book is to establish the principles on which our treatment of criminals should proceed; but while, in our opinion, she succeeds in this, she has perhaps rendered a yet greater service in disclosing to us the entire natural history of the lawless classes. She supplies us with the material essentially necessary as the basis of action on any theory of judgment and punishment of social offenders. Some of us may assume the reformation of criminals for their own sakes to be the first object; some may propose above everything else to render it impossible for criminals to repeat their offence; some would deter by the pain of punishment those who are corrupt and lawless from violating the order of society; some insist on the security of society as the object to be pursued, at any cost to criminals, whose welfare is quite a secondary consideration; while others hold that all these aims may be best accomplished by arresting crime at its source, and treating the ill-conditioned classes in their childhood, and thus preventing the growth and propagation of crime. But the first requisite to action under any of these views is to understand the peculiar character of criminal life, in its origin and progress. This requisite we believe Miss Carpenter to have supplied by the compilation of facts which she has presented to us. In the Memoirs of the celebrated Preston Chaplain, the Reverend John Clay, noticed in a former article of this Journal*, we found a useful and interesting account of the workings of the various schemes of convict treatment tried since our prison reforms began; but that description could not obtain its full value till we held the pre * Ed. Rev., vol. cxvii. p. 241. roused herself (June, 1852) to be privately presented to the Queen, who, by my friend, the Duchess of Sutherland, desired 'to make my acquaintance.' This is the last event recorded by her pen. On the 20th of November following, at midnight, without a struggle, scarcely a sigh, she breathed her last, in her ninetieth year. This story of a life-for such it is, rather than what might be inferred from the title-page-is closed with taste and feeling by the Editor: 'With the lives of the sisters closed a society which will be ever remembered by all who frequented those pleasant little gatherings in Curzon Street. Sometimes a note, sometimes a word, and more often the lamp being lighted over the door, was taken as notice to attend, and, on entering, it might be to find only a few habitués, or a larger and more brilliant assembly. All that was uncertain; but it was certain to find the cordial welcome of the two genial, lively, well-dressed, distinguished-looking hostesses-the comfortable teatable, over which their friend Miss Anne Turner presided for years, and Lady Charlotte Lindsay, the third partner in the firm, clever and agreeable to the last. There was an absence of formality-a kindly mingling together of persons of various habits, pursuits, and positions in life, that tended to bring different portions of society together, as much as in other coteries there is a tendency to keep them apart; and when death had closed this little chapter in our social life, no one attempted, or, indeed, could have carried it on with equal success: their age, their experience in society, Miss Berry's acknowledged talent, their home-staying life, their absence of domestic duties and of family ties, all contributed to give them the power and the means which others have not, to do that which few would have done so well, under equally favourable circum stances. 'It has long been over, and death has set its seal on many who composed that society. A time must come to all, when the enjoy ment of the present, and the hopes of the future, cede their place to the memory of the past. We cannot renew what is gone. 'Happy are those who can look back to social pleasures, to useful toil, and to domestic happiness, and gratefully recall the time "when "such things were"!' We will not risk spoiling or weakening this most appropriate finale by amplification-by more last words. All we wish to add is that, thanks to the labour of love with which the memory of the founder of that society has been cherished and illustrated, her beneficial influence, her power of animating and improving by precept and example, will not perish with her. They are preserved, for all who are capable of understanding and appreciating her, by this book. ART. II.-1. Our Convicts. By MARY CARPENTER. 2 vols. London: 1864. 2. Memoirs of Jane Cameron-Female Convict. By a PRISON MATRON. 2 vols. London: 1864. A FTER all that has been published, in many forms, within a few years, we have never till now had the means placed before us of forming any true and complete conception of the distinctive life and character of the criminal class of our population. Miss Carpenter has at last supplied us with the material needed to qualify us so to understand the conditions of a life altogether unlike our own, as to enable us to perceive what sort of minds we have to deal with in our attempts to guard society from the evils of lawlessness. The main object of Miss Carpenter's book is to establish the principles on which our treatment of criminals should proceed; but while, in our opinion, she succeeds in this, she has perhaps rendered a yet greater service in disclosing to us the entire natural history of the lawless classes. She supplies us with the material essentially necessary as the basis of action on any theory of judgment and punishment of social offenders. Some of us may assume the reformation of criminals for their own sakes to be the first object; some may propose above everything else to render it impossible for criminals to repeat their offence; some would deter by the pain of punishment those who are corrupt and lawless from violating the order of society; some insist on the security of society as the object to be pursued, at any cost to criminals, whose welfare is quite a secondary consideration; while others hold that all these aims may be best accomplished by arresting crime at its source, and treating the ill-conditioned classes in their childhood, and thus preventing the growth and propagation of crime. But the first requisite to action under any of these views is to understand the peculiar character of criminal life, in its origin and progress. This requisite we believe Miss Carpenter to have supplied by the compilation of facts which she has presented to us. In the Memoirs of the celebrated Preston Chaplain, the Reverend John Clay, noticed in a former article of this Journal*, we found a useful and interesting account of the workings of the various schemes of convict treatment tried since our prison reforms began; but that description could not obtain its full value till we held the pre * Ed. Rev., vol. cxvii. p. 241. liminary knowledge of the natural history of the lawless classes which has been accumulating since Mr. Clay's time, and which we find collected and methodised in the work before us. We are too apt to lose sight of that broad humanity which is common to us all, whenever some peculiarity masks it from our observation. A blind man is thought of not as a man who is blind, but as one separated from the rest of mankind by his blindness. A man addicted to liquor, becomes to all but his household connexions, a drunkard, and there's an end. So a man who has once transgressed the boundaries of the criminal law, is thenceforward a criminal, and in that term we seem, as it were, to drown many of the common attributes of human nature, though it is by the temptations of human nature itself that he has fallen. Yet, as Dr. Johnson felt, who can tell whether we ourselves might not change places with criminals on their way to the gallows, if the whole course of the existence of both parties could be truly judged on earth? The sources of crime are so mysterious, the circumstances which lead men into crimes so various, that it is only by a close study of the antecedents of the criminal classes, that we can hope to understand them, not only from our own point of view as breakers of the law, but from their point of view as victims of it. In a rough way, we may say that there are three kinds of x criminals among us. Of these, we may take first, for a very brief notice, the respectable men in society who suddenly become convicts. In no other case is the perplexity of dealing with that mysterious being--a criminal-so keenly felt. Some of us are no doubt conscious of it at this hour, when events bring up the name of William Roupell, or Sir John Dean Paul. We perhaps remember many an evening in the House when the one was sitting at our elbow, or talking within our hearing; and many a charity meeting when the other was busy on the platform, and listened to with sympathy and respect. What a gulf seems to have opened between them and us by their becoming convicts! Their life seems to be suddenly obliterated from our comprehension, and to have been governed by passions and forces above the average incidents of our social existence, though they appeared to be commonplace men enough till they acquired the notoriety of the Old Bailey. The fact is, however, that those who assumed to know them ought to have been aware of the conditions which ultimately determined their lot,-of the habits of self-indulgence, of the tendencies to vanity, to intrigue, to ostentation or mere trickery, while the weakness of the conscience ought to be recognisable in such cases after very little intercourse. The |