, or half
so successful, as yours. While the world admires in you an unlimited
knowledge of mankind, deep thought, vivid imagination, and bursts of
eloquence from unclouded heights, no less am I delighted when I see you
at the school-room you have liberated from cruelty, and at the cottage
you have purified from disease."

We have before us--its edges browned by age--a reprint of a letter
largely circulated at the time, addressed by Dickens to _The Times_,
dated "Devonshire Terrace, 13th Novr., 1849," in which he describes, in
graphic and powerful language, the ribald and disgusting scenes which he
witnessed at Horsemonger Lane Gaol on the occasion of the execution of
the Mannings. The letter is too long to quote in its entirety, but the
following extract will suffice:--"I have seen habitually some of the
worst sources of general contamination and corruption in this country,
and I think there are not many phases of London life that could surprise
me. I am solemnly convinced that nothing that ingenuity could devise to
be done in this city in the same compass of time could work such ruin as
one public execution, and I stand astounded and appalled by the
wickedness it exhibits." The letter contains an urgent appeal to the
then Home Secretary, Sir George Grey, "as a solemn duty which he owes to
society, and a responsibility which he cannot for ever put away," to
originate an immediate legislative change in this respect. Forster says
in allusion to the above-mentioned letter:--"There began an active
agitation against public executions, which never ceased until the
salutary change was effected which has worked so well." Dickens happily
lived to see the fruition of his labours, for the Private Execution Act
was passed in 1868, and the last public execution took place at Newgate
on 26th May of that year. As indicative of the new state of feeling at
that time, it may be mentioned that the number of spectators was not
large, and they were observed to conduct themselves with unusual
decorum.

It is valuable to record this as one of many public reforms which
Dickens by his writings and influence certainly helped to accomplish. In
his standard work on _Popular Government_ (1885), Sir Henry Sumner Maine
says:-"Dickens, who spent his early manhood among the politicians of
1832, trained in Bentham's school, [Bentham, by the bye, being quoted in
_Edwin Drood_,] hardly ever wrote a novel without attacking an abuse.
The procedure of the