been originally of wood, but which had been
changed into stone by being buried in earth of petrifying quality at a
place called Apsley Gowis, near Woburn Abbey.

The prison of Southwark, now demolished, opened on two streets, between
which, as a gate, it formerly served as means of communication. It had
two doors. In the large street a door, apparently used by the
authorities; and in the lane the door of punishment, used by the rest of
the living and by the dead also, because when a prisoner in the jail
died it was by that issue that his corpse was carried out. A liberation
not to be despised. Death is release into infinity.

It was by the gate of punishment that Gwynplaine had been taken into
prison. The lane, as we have said, was nothing but a little passage,
paved with flints, confined between two opposite walls. There is one of
the same kind at Brussels called _Rue d'une Personne_. The walls were
unequal in height. The high one was the prison; the low one, the
cemetery--the enclosure for the mortuary remains of the jail--was not
higher than the ordinary stature of a man. In it was a gate almost
opposite the prison wicket. The dead had only to cross the street; the
cemetery was but twenty paces from the jail. On the high wall was
affixed a gallows; on the low one was sculptured a Death's head. Neither
of these walls made its opposite neighbour more cheerful.

CHAPTER VI.

THE KIND OF MAGISTRACY UNDER THE WIGS OF FORMER DAYS.

Any one observing at that moment the other side of the prison--its
facade--would have perceived the high street of Southwark, and might
have remarked, stationed before the monumental and official entrance to
the jail, a travelling carriage, recognized as such by its imperial. A
few idlers surrounded the carriage. On it was a coat of arms, and a
personage had been seen to descend from it and enter the prison.
"Probably a magistrate," conjectured the crowd. Many of the English
magistrates were noble, and almost all had the right of bearing arms. In
France blazon and robe were almost contradictory terms. The Duke
Saint-Simon says, in speaking of magistrates, "people of that class." In
England a gentleman was not despised for being a judge.

There are travelling magistrates in England; they are called judges of
circuit, and nothing was easier than to recognize the carriage as the
vehicle of a judge on circuit. That which was less comprehensible was,
that the supposed magistrate got do