I have lingered thus long over his story, which is at best but sad and disheartening, because it is a good illustration of the methods of coercion tried in those days in the Penitentiary, and moreover it opens up the whole question of escapes from prison. Of course the convicted criminal shares with all other captives an ever-present unsatisfied longing to be free. Like a caged blackbird, or a rat in a trap, the felon who has lost his liberty will certainly escape whenever the opportunity is offered to him. To leave gates ajar, or to withdraw a customary guard, would supply a temptation as irresistible as a bone to a hungry dog; and a prisoner’s faculties are so sharp set by his confinement, that he sees chances which are invisible to his gaolers. A resolute and skilful man will brave all dangers, will exhibit untold patience and ingenuity, will endure pain and lengthened hardship, if he sees but a loophole for escape in the end. The fiction of Edmond Dantes and his famous escape from the Chateau d’If, is but the embroidery of a poetical imagination working upon a sober groundwork of fact. The records of all ancient prisons contribute their quota of similar legends, showing how the fugitive triumphed over difficulties seemingly insurmountable. Baron Trenck’s escape from Spandau, and Casanova’s from the Piombi, are as familiar to us as household words. In this present time escapes are of rarer occurrence, and for many reasons. It is not that prisons are really more secure _per se_:—so far as construction can be depended upon, a gaol like Newgate seems as safe as stone and iron can make it:—but the principles of security are so much better realized and understood. Our forefathers trusted to physical means, and thought enough was done. To-day our reliance is placed on the moral aid of continuous supervision. An escapade like that of Pickard Smith would be next to impossible now. He would have been defeated with his own weapons. To compass his ends a prisoner must have privacy; hours of quiet undisturbed by the intrusive visit of a lynx-eyed official, and a cell all to himself. He has now the cell to himself—at least he has with him no companion felon—but he is for ever tended by an “old man of the mountain,” in the shape of his warder, who is always with him—“turning him over,” as the prison slang calls it; searching him, that is to say, several times a day, both his person and the cell he occupies. To conceal implements, to carry on works like the removal of bricks, of flooring, or of bars, is next to impossible, or feasible only through a lack of vigilance for which the official in fault would be called seriously to account. The whole system as pursued in British Government prisons even where prisoners work in the open air miles beyond prison gates or boundary walls depends on the close observance of certain principles which have come to be regarded as axioms almost with the officials. No prisoner is