It did not "come about from that" by any means. The Tombs was a comparatively new prison when Dickens saw it first. It was erected under an authorization of the Common Council of the city of New York, issued in 1833. At that time, Mr. John L. Stevens, of the Hoboken family who still keep up seigneurial state on the bank of the Hudson, having recently returned from an extended tour through Asia and the Holy Land, issued an account of his travels, with many illustrations of the rare and curious things he had seen. Among these was a representation of an ancient Egyptian tomb, accompanied by a full and accurate description. The majestic proportions and sombre beauty of this mortuary structure so impressed the committee of the Common Council who had the selection of plans for the new jail that they adopted it as their model, and the general appearance and construction of the building was made to conform as closely as the necessities of its use permitted to Stevens's design. As it stands it is probably the finest specimen of Egyptian architecture of its order to be found outside of Egypt itself, and the filth, squalor and grimy ugliness that hem it in only serve to accentuate its architectural beauty. Its official title is the City Prison, but the one by which it is best known was derived from the character of the edifice in "Stevens's Travels," after which it was planned. From an artistic point of view the selection of a site for the Tombs was singularly unfortunate. At the date of its erection its location was upon the upper outskirts of the city. Now the town has grown beyond it miles upon miles. For years it stood in the heart of the lowest and most dangerous criminal district. Even now its surroundings of tenement-houses, workshops, dirty streets harboring dirty shops of the basest order, are anything but inviting to the sightseer. Through Leonard and Franklin streets, which bound its lower and upper ends, one catches eastward glimpses of Baxter street festooned with the sidewalk displays of the old clo' shops, and westward sees the passing life of Broadway. Elm street in the rear and Centre street in front of it abound in sour-savored groggeries and the shabby hang-dog offices of the lower order of criminal lawyers who practice at the bar of the Tombs court. The streets swarm with the children of the tenements, which line them with towering piles of unclean brick and mortar; and the pedestrians who navigate them, and who hang about the outside of the prison, as if held there by a spell and only awaiting their turn to pass within its walls, are for the most part of that skulking, evil class which knows the interior of the jail quite as well as its outer barriers, and the ways which lead to its frowning gate. For many years the passenger traffic of the New York Central Railroad was embarked at a depot occupying the block above the Tombs. Travelers were here taken on board cars which