es prevailed; and in Hamburg, the wives of the
magistrates went to the prisons every Saturday to give out the women's
work. In some places the men were set to mend the roads, clean the
bridges, clear away the snow, or do whatever the magistrates desired,
and a guard with fixed bayonets always attended them. But they much
preferred this labour, hard though it often was, to being shut up
indoors, and looked healthy and cheerful.

* * * * *

After three months Mr. Howard returned home and inspected the prison at
Dover, to find to his dismay everything exactly as before; and when,
after a little rest, he set out on a second English tour, scarcely
anywhere did he perceive an improvement. One small prison in the Forest
of Dean was inhabited by two sick and half-starved men, who had been
kept in one room for more than a year almost without water or fire or
any allowance for food. In another, at Penzance, which consisted of two
tiny rooms in a stable-yard, was one prisoner only, who would have died
of hunger had it not been for a brother, even poorer than himself, who
brought him just enough to keep him alive. Again and again Howard paid
out of his own pocket the debts of many of those miserable people, which
sometimes began by being no more than a shilling, but soon mounted up,
with all the fees, to several pounds.

* * * * *

With only short intervals for rest, Howard went on travelling and
inspecting, now in the British Isles and now abroad, and by slow degrees
he began to see an improvement in the condition of the prisoners in his
own country, whether criminals or debtors in gaols or convicts in the
'hulks,' as the rotten old ships used as prisons were called. He was
careful never to leave a single cell unvisited, and spoke his mind
freely both to the keepers and to the magistrates. The House of Commons
always listened with eagerness to all he had to tell, and passed several
Bills which should have changed things much for the better. But the
difficulty lay, not in making the law, but in getting it carried out.

It is wonderful how, during all these travels and the hours spent in the
horrible atmosphere of the prisons, a delicate man like Howard so seldom
was ill. Luckily he knew enough of medicine to teach him to take some
simple precautions, and he never entered a hospital or prison before
breakfast. Dresden and Venice appear to have been the two cities on t