The most interesting, and undoubtedly the most cruel and oppressive prisons were those of the kingdom of the Two Sicilies, and one of the worst in Naples is described as typical of the rest--the infamous prison of the Castel Capuano, so called from the district in which it was situated, and also called the Vicaria, the name it bears to this day, derived from the viceroy who ruled in the days of the Spanish domination. This prison gained an unenviable reputation in the time of King Ferdinand II, when its horrible condition drew down upon it the unmeasured reproaches of Mr. William E. Gladstone. The Bourbon government, ever cruel and tyrannical, was indeed rousing the indignation of the civilised world by its misusage of its political prisoners. Arbitrary arrests were made wholesale, trial was tardy, often there was no trial at all; conviction was obtained by perjury or conspiracy, and worse than all, the victims of these unworthy processes were thrown into the foulest dens or dungeons mostly unfit for human occupation. In 1851 Mr. Gladstone, after a prolonged personal inquiry, addressed an open letter to the British premier, at that time Lord Aberdeen, in which he uttered his protest with indignant eloquence. He describes the prisons of Naples as being the extreme of filth and horror, and declares that in the Vicaria he saw the doctors, not going to the sick prisoners, but the sick prisoners, men almost with death upon their faces, toiling up-stairs to them, because the lower regions of such a place of darkness were too foul and loathsome to allow it to be expected that professional men should consent to earn bread by entering them. The diet consisted of black bread and soup, the first sound, but coarse to the last degree, the latter so nauseous that nothing but the extreme of hunger could overcome the repugnance of nature to it. The association was indiscriminate among a crowd of between three and four hundred murderers, thieves, all kinds of ordinary criminals, some condemned and some uncondemned, and the politically accused. They were a self-governed community, the main authority being that of the _camorristi_, the men of most celebrity among them for audacious crime. Employment they had none. This swarm of human beings all slept in a low long vaulted room, having no light except from a single and very moderate sized grating at one end. The political prisoners, upon payment, had the privilege of a separate chamber, but there was no division between them.