it must be conceded that in her efforts to humanize and christianize them, Mrs. Fry's far-reaching philanthropy became a great national benefit. With modest thankfulness, she herself records, after an interview with Queen Adelaide and some of the royal family, "Surely, the result of our labors has hitherto been beyond our most sanguine expectations, as to the improved state of our prisons, female convict-ships, and the convicts in New South Wales." CHAPTER X. VISITS TO CONTINENTAL PRISONS. Contrary to the general practice of mankind in matters of pure benevolence, Mrs. Fry looked around for new worlds to conquer, in the shape of yet unfathomed prison miseries. Many, if not most people, would have rested upon the laurels already won, and have been contented with the measures of good already achieved. Not so with the philanthropist whose work we sketch. Like an ever-widening stream, her life rolled on, full of acts of mercy, growing wider and broader in its channel of operations and its schemes of mercy. In pursuance of these schemes she visited prisons at Nottingham, Lincoln, Wakefield, Leeds, Doncaster, Sheffield, York, Durham, Newcastle, Carlisle, Lancaster, Liverpool, and most other towns of any size in England. She extended these journeys, at different times, into Scotland and Ireland, examining into the condition of prisons and prisoners with the deepest interest. It was her usual custom to form ladies' prison-visiting societies, wherever practicable, and to communicate to the authorities subsequently her views and suggestions in letters, dealing with these matters in detail. But her fame was not confined within the limits of the British Isles. Communications reached her from St. Petersburg, from Hamburg, from Brussels, from Baden, from Paris, Berlin, and Potsdam; all tending to show that enquiry was abroad, that nations and governments as well as individuals were waking up to a sense of their responsibilities. Both rulers and legislators were beginning to see that _preventing_ crime was wiser than _punishing_ it, that the reformation of the criminal classes was the great end of punitive measures. This conviction reached, it was comparatively easy for the philanthropists to work.