The principal difficulty in the Swedish system of imprisonment, is the arrangement of places of confinement for persons accused. Every parish in Sweden was, not many years since, visited periodically by an ambulatory Judge, who heard and decided on the spot. This system, of course, was subject to great delay, and the unfortunate object of suspicion was confined-sometimes for more than a year-in a parish lock-up. He was neither allowed air nor exercise, but he could be visited by his friends, and had the liberty of books, if he was fortunate enough to be able to read. In 1817, a proposition was submitted to the Diet, to reduce the number of these district prisons to 134, to divide the country into the same number of jurisdictions, and to appoint a Judge to each. This plan obviates the intolerable delays of the old system; but in a small country like Sweden, justice administered by 134 judges wants something of its dignity, and still more of its certainty.

The prisons for the condemned are divided in Sweden into three classes, the first for those condemned in perpetuity; the second for the condemned for a limited period; and, lastly, what are called "provincial prisons." In the first, the prisoners are confined together, but under strict surveillance, by night as well as by day, and with the absolute prohibition of speech. The second class, ten in number, are built on the cellular system, and are all of very modern construction. The provincial prisons are restricted to prisoners sentenced to terms of from two months to two years. Those sentenced for less than two months are placed in one of the 134 lock-up houses mentioned above. Those sentenced for more than two years are placed in the old prisons, where the necessary enforcement of silence is a terrible punishment to those condemned for a lengthened period.

It has been calculated, that, under the new system in Sweden, not one-half of the numbers of the former system will be confined in the prisons. The encumbrance of prisoners waiting for their sentences was terrible. For the greater prisons it has been calculated that accommodation for somewhat more than 1,000 is necessary, and about 2,000 for the provincial prisons. If we estimate the average term of imprisonment at three months, (and it should be remembered that a very large proportion of sentences are always light,) this would suppose 12,000 persons annually to pass through the Swedish prisons. As above 100,000 annually pass through the prisons of France, the morality of Sweden, in proportion to its population, would be about the average.

The system of Denmark is divided into three categories, much on the French plan. It has its maisons de force, its maisons de correction, and its communal prisons. It is not calculated that above 1,500 persons are under sentence in prison, in Denmark, at the same time, in the communal establishments;

and, arguing upon this proportion, the state of crime in Denmark would not seem to be alarming. Denmark, in 1846, adopted the cellular system, for prisoners sentenced to short periods of imprisonment. It is erecting, by degrees, the necessary buildings. The Government has long decided, for imprisonment for lengthened periods, on the total separation of the prisoners during the night; during the day, they are to be allowed to work together. Unfortunately, the smaller prisons, and those for accused persons, on which the great improvement falls, are in the hands of the Communes, who bear the entire expense, and are not always ready with the money. A want of organization is, likewise, the consequence; and the Government will not interfere, lest it should be called upon to make new constructions on its own account.

Holland, about the same time, adopted the cellular system without restriction, for every kind of offence and every degree of punishment. This system is applied even to women, from whom the same danger of plots, or concerted vengeance, is not to be apprehended. It is a curious fact in the case, that the women confined in the prison at Geneva, when they lived in common, actually petitioned to be placed in separate cells. It must have been some considerable provocation to have induced these people, with all their fondness for gossip and conversation, thus to have made a spontaneous movement for their own separation. It would seem to prove that women, under punishment, are more open to amelioration than men, notwithstanding the prevalence of the contrary opinion. should be remembered, that the gnawing terrors of remorse, which make solitary confinement so fearful to the male prisoner, are not likely to act to the same extent upon the female, who is usually condemned for less heinous offences. Holland is, we believe, the only country which has thus adopted the cellular system, in its most enlarged and rigorous interpretation.

It

The systems of Italy are marked with the good intentions and miserable realities, which are the characteristics of that unhappy country. Anomalies and abuses exist every where. The Grand Duke of Tuscany issued some time ago an order which was virtually to suppress the punishment of death and the bagne, leaving actually nothing to terrify offenders but inferior punishments; but he permits even yet the Director-General of Police at Florence to maintain the monstrous privilege, by which, on his own sole power and responsibility, and without rendering an account to any one, he is empowered to condemn any person he pleases to a three years' imprisonment. It would be difficult to find a similar abuse in any part of the civilized world. It is true that an appeal lies to the Minister of Justice; but this appeal is surrounded with so many formalities that it is virtually useless. In Rome, a prison constructed for young offenders, so long ago

as the pontificate of Clement XI., has never yet been fairly finished, so as to be fit for its purpose; it is now used for the temporary seclusion of a few women. The present Pope has issued a Commission of Inquiry, which has done nothing. The maison centrale of Mantua is actually used to diminish the number of prisoners, when the prisons are overcrowded; they perish in a few months in its pestilential atmosphere, and relieve the State from the trouble of erecting new buildings at a very small expense. It is true this State is Austrian. Austrian. Perhaps, by this time, some reforms have been made in the prison, the condition of which was so bad as to create an outcry in Italy itself.

Piedmont, destined to lead the way in Italian improvements, has built two prisons on the American system at Aubun; they hold, together, about five hundred prisoners.

The present prisons in Italy are mainly old palaces, constructed in the Middle Ages at once for residence and defence; and presenting all the inconvenience of the same appropriation of similar buildings as maisons centrales in France.

The Tuscan system, the most completely organized in Italy, comprises four sections; the bagne, the maison de force, the maison de détention, and the maison correctionale. It is the same system as that in France, with the exception of the intermediate maison de détention, used for offences between what we should call crimes and misdemeanors, and partaking of the arbitrary character of all intermediate punishments. These, it is said, are to be abolished; and as the bagnes are supposed to be abolished too, the system in Tuscany will be wonderfully simple, if it can only be made effectual. Offenders under eighteen are subjected to the simple decree of the Director-General of Police, whose sentence only imposes a correctional imprisonment; and as all the " pomp and circumstance" of a trial, so mischievous to young criminals, is avoided, this most absurd legislation has its good side. The prisons are well examined: those for males, by a Commission, composed chiefly of the Clergy, who make regular visits; those for women, by the Sisters of Charity, who are constant in their attention.

The cellular system has been adopted, for some time, in all cases of relapsed criminals, who are separated, with laudable care, from the fresh offenders. It was, likewise, not long ago, about to be adopted for the graver offences, and, perhaps, is established by this time.

ART. IV.-Johnson's Lives of the English Poets. (Murray's Edited by PETER CUNNINGHAM, F.S.A.

British Classics.)

Murray.

THE readers of the biography of Addison in the above collection, of which as perfect and complete an edition has now been laid before the public as care and ability could make it, will probably not be sorry to hear that the "Works of Addison" will form a future portion of the series of which "Johnson's Lives" already constitutes so popular a part.

The prominent men of Addison's day were rendered all the more prominent, and have become all the more familiar with posterity, because of their alliances, sometimes because of their enmities, with one another. As Addison himself said of Virgil and Horace, that "neither would have gained so great reputation, had they not been the friends and admirers of each other," so may it be said of Addison himself and some of his contemporaries. There are cases in which posterity will gain little by this. The intimacy of Addison and Swift, (an intimacy which the former kept up at a time when to be faithful to friendship with such a man as Swift was to menace the fortunes of Addison,)—their intimacy when living is perhaps one of the causes why, in the series of the British Classics, the complete Works of Swift are to follow the complete works of Addison. This is a matter for regret rather than congratulation. Addison is welcome to our hearth, as an eloquent and refined visitor, from whose conversation there is always something to be learned, and who, if he be, indeed, worldly, is ever decent. Swift, on the other hand, is a man for the master of the house to see privately in his library, if he really need to hold conference at all with such a writer; but Swift is not a man to be made welcome to the circle at our fireside. Doubtless, even the elegant Addison had his faults, and the coarse and selfish Dean was not entirely destitute of all the virtues. Never, however, can he be esteemed, Christian Minister as he called himself, as "the friend of the family." He will be found, in turns, in fierce antagonism against all. He is no gentle instructor of the young; he has as little reverence for the feelings of the aged as he has respect for the modest fair. Addison raised the character of woman, and paid homage to what he had so raised. Swift coarsely laughed at the moralist for this act, which was done less in a spirit of gallantry than one of civilization. A consideration, briefly held, of the life of Addison will not, perhaps, be accounted as supererogatory, previous to the appearance of his Works. We shall not consider the same course necessary in the case of the Dean of Saint Patrick's. In the latter half of the seventeenth century, the living of

Milston, in Wiltshire, worth some £120 per annum, was occupied by a learned, not an unwise, and a somewhat eccentric northcountry Clergyman, named Lancelot Addison. Lancelot was himself the son of an exceedingly poor Westmoreland "Parson;" and in the character of a "poor child," with favourable testimonials from the Grammar School of Appleby, he was received into Queen's College, Oxford. This was not the period when the wisdom heaped up at the University was satirically said to be great, for the alleged reason that most young men brought some with them, and were sure to leave it all behind them. It was a time when a gigantic labour was required to be spent before a small, but highly-prized, honour could be achieved, and "Detur digniori" was the device of the laurel crown.

Lancelot was as bold as, and a far better man than, his namesake in the old romaunt. He was a strong Church-and-King man, at an epoch when the University was governed by authorities which did not consider the Church as infallible, nor the Monarch as necessarily the "Lord's anointed." The chivalrous feelings of the young Bachelor of Arts led him to tilt against the authorities on the grave questions of monarchical and episcopal principles; and in his privileged character of Terræ Filius,—a sort of licensed buffoon, who had as much licence at a "Commencement," as a slave in the Saturnalia,—he bespattered the supporters of republican opinions, and the friends of religious reformation beyond that accomplished in the Church, with such a shower of loyal and orthodox arguments, and sarcasm not very choice of epithet, that his privilege was not respected. Very soon after we find him, no longer a member of the University, travelling from house to house in Sussex, giving private instruction in the "humanities," and political lessons, to the sons and daughters of orthodox Cavaliers. When Charles II. "got his own again," as it was called, and terribly abused what he so little merited, he rewarded the courageous Lancelot, by appointing him as Chaplain to the garrison at Dunkirk. This splendid piece of preferment was ultimately changed, in 1662, for a similar situation at Tangier.

The good man looked upon the change as a genuine "preferment." He was pleased with the novelty of his position, had a watchful eye, observed narrowly, and finally wrote a book upon Barbary and its inhabitants, which is full of quaint matter, knowledge useful and useless, much credulity, and a simplicity which endears the author to the reader. The reverend Chaplain had been eight years engaged in such duties as Chaplains were then expected to perform, when he applied for a "holiday," and by Government permission he visited England. He was in the full enjoyment of his relaxation when he heard that his post had been given to another. There was scant ceremony and much despotism employed in those days, and the ex-Chaplain