id he, when laying it before the Chamber:
"Our subject is not entirely to sequestrate the prisoner nor to confine
him to absolute solitude. Some of the provisions of the bill will
mitigate the principle of solitary confinement in a manner which was
suggested by the Commission of 1840, and should not pass unnoticed by
the Chamber. Convicts sentenced to more than twelve years' hard labor,
or to perpetual hard labor, after having gone through twelve years of
their punishment, or when they shall have attained the age of seventy,
will be no longer separated from others, except during the night." The
bill further provided, besides this mitigation of the solitary
confinement system, that the "Bagnes," where galley slaves had hitherto
labored, should be replaced by houses of hard labor, and that smaller
prisons should be erected for minor offenses instead of sending
criminals convicted of them to the great central prisons. The bill was
certainly destined to effect a total revolution in the management of
such places as St. Lazare and similar prisons, in addition to giving
solid promise of improvement in the punitive system of France.

During this brief final visit to the French capital, Mrs. Fry entered on
her sixty-third year, aged and infirm in body, but still animated by the
master passion of serving the sad and sorrowful. Her brother, Joseph
John Gurney, together with his wife, were with her in Paris, but they
pursued their journey into Switzerland, while she returned home in June,
feeling that life's shadows were lengthening apace, and that not much
time remained to her in which to complete her work. The impressions she
had made on the society of the gay city had been altogether good. Like
the people who stared at the pilgrims passing through Vanity Fair, the
Parisians wondered, and understood for the first time that here was a
lady who did indeed pass through things temporal, "with eyes fixed on
things eternal"; and whose supreme delight lay, not in ball-rooms,
race-courses, or courts, but in finding out suffering humanity and
striving to alleviate its woes. Doubtless many of the gay Parisians
shrugged their shoulders and smiled good-humoredly at the "illusion,"
"notion," "fanaticism," or whatever else they called it; they were
simply living on too low a plane of life to understand, or to criticise
Mrs. Fry. Except animated by somewhat of fellow-feeling, none can
understand her career even now. It stands too far apart from,