ent
that the nonsense of all this (and it is mostly nonsense, but not quite)
should be sent about its business straightway, and forbidden to deceive
the well-meaning souls among us any more. Reform, if we will understand
that divine word, cannot begin till then. One day, I do know, this, as
is the doom of all nonsense, will be drummed out of the world, with due
placard stuck on its back, and the populace flinging dead cats at it:
but whether soon or not, is by no means so certain. I rather guess,
_not_ at present, not quite soon. Fraternity, in other countries, has
gone on, till it found itself unexpectedly manipulating guillotines by
its chosen Robespierres, and become a fraternity like Cain's. Much
to its amazement! For in fact it is not all nonsense; there is an
infinitesimal fraction of sense in it withal; which is so difficult
to disengage;--which must be disengaged, and laid hold of, before
Fraternity can vanish.

But to our subject,--the Model Prison, and the strange theory of life
now in action there. That, for the present, is my share in the wide
adventure of Philanthropism; the world's share, and how and when it is
to be liquidated and ended, rests with the Supreme Destinies.

Several months ago, some friends took me with them to see one of the
London Prisons; a Prison of the exemplary or model kind. An immense
circuit of buildings; cut out, girt with a high ring-wall, from the
lanes and streets of the quarter, which is a dim and crowded one.
Gateway as to a fortified place; then a spacious court, like the square
of a city; broad staircases, passages to interior courts; fronts of
stately architecture all round. It lodges some thousand or twelve
hundred prisoners, besides the officers of the establishment. Surely one
of the most perfect buildings, within the compass of London. We looked
at the apartments, sleeping-cells, dining-rooms, working-rooms, general
courts or special and private: excellent all, the ne-plus-ultra of human
care and ingenuity; in my life I never saw so clean a building; probably
no Duke in England lives in a mansion of such perfect and thorough
cleanness.

The bread, the cocoa, soup, meat, all the various sorts of food, in
their respective cooking-places, we tasted: found them of excellence
superlative. The prisoners sat at work, light work, picking oakum, and
the like, in airy apartments with glass roofs, of agreeable temperature
and perfect ventilation; silent, or at least conversing