_ gaols. Two pounds of bread a day, soup
once, with a pound of meat on Sunday.' This was in Brussels, but when he
went on to Ghent, things were better still.

Like most of the large towns of Flanders, Ghent had a stirring history,
and its townspeople were rich and prosperous. At the time of Howard's
visit, it was part of the dominions of the emperor Joseph II., brother
of Marie Antoinette, and by his orders a large prison was in course of
building. Though not yet finished, it already contained more than a
hundred and fifty men, and Howard felt as if he must be dreaming when he
saw that each of these prisoners had a room to himself, a bedstead, a
mattress, a pillow, a pair of sheets, with two blankets in winter and
one in summer. Everything was very clean, and the food plentiful and
wholesome. But, besides all this, Howard noted with a feeling of envy
two customs which so far he had tried in vain to introduce into England.
One was that the men and the women should be kept apart, and the other,
that they should be given useful work to employ their time. In England,
a prisoner was sometimes condemned to 'hard labour,' but this was a mere
form. There was no system arranged beforehand for the employment of
convicts, and indeed, till more light was admitted into the English
prisons, it was too dark to work at anything, so they just sat with the
other criminals in the dark, stifling dungeons, with nothing to do and
nothing to think of!

A more horrible punishment could not have been invented, and if the
criminal left the prison at all, he was sure to come out even worse than
he went in. And how was anything else possible?

* * * * *

Now in Ghent, and in most of the Flemish prisons, it was all as
different as could be. The women sat in work-rooms of their own, when
they had finished cleaning and cooking, mending all their own and the
men's clothes, which it was part of their duty to wash. This done, wool
in what is called its 'raw state' was served out to them--that is, wool
as it had been taken off the sheep's fleece--and they had to comb out
all the tangles, and spin it into long skeins. Then the skeins were
taken to the men, many of whom were weavers by trade, and by them it was
woven into cloth which was sold.

Thus, in doing work in which they could occupy themselves and take a
pride, the prisoners unconsciously ceased to think all day of the bad
lives they had led, and longed to lead a