At 11 o'clock Mr. Dennison called, and took us to the Penitentiary, where nearly 700 prisoners are confined. I think he said 695, although it will hold the full number of 700 if need be. For the credit of the sex, I must say that only ten out of the whole are females. These ten are lodged each in a small room, for it can scarcely be called a cell, very well furnished, and opening into a large sitting-room, of which they all have the unrestrained use, although the presence of a matron puts a restraint on their tongues. They were employed in needlework. The cells of the men are arranged in tiers, and are certainly very different looking habitations to those of the women, and greatly inferior in size and airiness to the cells at Philadelphia, where, in addition to the grating in front of the cell, there was a door behind leading into a small enclosure or court. Here the only opening in the cell is by a door into a long gallery, and the cells were much smaller than either at Philadelphia or at Kingston; but the prisoners only inhabit these cells at night, the solitary system not being adopted or approved of here. The silent system, however, is practised here as at Kingston, and the prisoners are employed in large workshops, chiefly in making agricultural instruments, hoops for casks, saddles, carpenters' tools, and even rocking horses and toys, which must be rather heart-breaking work for those who have children. The men have certain tasks allotted them, and when the day's work is done, may devote the rest of their time to working on their own account, which most of them do; the chief warden told us that he had lately paid a man, on his leaving the prison, a hundred and twenty-five dollars for extra work done in this way. The warden told us that the men, when discharged, were always strongly urged to return to their own homes instead of seeking to retrieve their characters elsewhere, and that their doing so was generally attended with a better result than when they went to a new place and had no check on their proceedings. This does away with the chief argument of our quaker friend at Philadelphia, in favour of the solitary system, which was, that the prisoner's return to his friends became more easy, when none of them knew that he had been in prison, of which they could not well be ignorant if he had mixed with other prisoners in a public jail. It must be borne in mind, however, that the great demand in this country for work renders it much more easy for a person so circumstanced to obtain employment, even with a damaged character, than in England, where our ticket-of-leave men find this almost impossible. There is also, we are told, a kinder feeling towards prisoners here on their leaving the jail than in England, and this saves them from the want and consequent temptation to which our English ticket-of-leave men are exposed; the result is that a much less proportion of those released in America are re-committed for new offences.