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 Court of Chancery and of the Ecclesiastical Courts, the delays of the Public Offices, the costliness of divorce, the state of the dwellings of the poor, and the condition of the cheap schools in the North of England, furnished him with what he seemed to consider, in all sincerity, the true moral of a series of fictions." * * * * * We bid a kindly adieu to the "dear old City" where so many genial friends have been made, so many happy hours have been passed, so many pleasant memories have been stored, and for the time leave "the pensive glory, That fills the Kentish hills,"