In these, with the iron gates locked behind them, they stand at a long, narrow board fixed to the wall, about the width of a plate, and take their meals. No place surely was at once so clean, and so hopelessly ponderous and strong. The very idea of it seemed to weigh on one like a nightmare, and make one stretch ourself, as for a sense of freedom. The few women who were in prison, were, of course, convicts. They all rose at our entrance into their room, where they were all together, and courtesied very respectfully, and if one were to judge from their countenances, we could not think them very criminal. The men seemed hardy, reckless, and inclined to be insolent, for every word uttered in passing along these courts of solid stone was flung back from wall to wall, and was heard in the remotest corners; and more than once, we heard the convicts take up our words, imitate them in a burlesque style, and then join in laughter at their own audacity. There were numbers of them that we should not be glad to meet in a solitary wood. But the women, had I not known that they were convicts, I should have regarded as a set of as decent, modest, and honest women of the working class as one usually sees. There was no expression of hardened guilt or gross depravity about them. A thoroughly debased woman is one of the most revolting objects in creation; but how rarely is woman's nature so thoroughly degraded! How long do the feminine qualities of gentleness and amiability outlive in them the temptations and incentives to crime! How often are they the tools and victims of men, and how often and readily might they be called back from error to the purest and most devoted virtue! The beds of all the prisoners were laid on iron frames, supported on solid stones, so that they could cut no wood from them for any purposes of escape. Everywhere, above and below, all was stone, stone, solid stone, and bars of massy iron; and yet out of even this place there have been escapes.