On his release from Reading on Wednesday, May 19th, 1897, he at once crossed to France with friends, and a few days later penned that pathetic letter, pregnant with pity, in which he pleaded for the kindlier treatment of little children lying in our English gaols. This letter, with his own name attached, filled over two columns in _The Daily Chronicle_ of May 28th. It created considerable sensation--a well-known Catholic weekly comparing it 'in its crushing power to the letter with which Stevenson shamed the shameless traducer of Father Damien.' A second letter on the subject of the cruelties of the English Prison system appeared in the same paper on March 24th, 1898. It was headed: 'Don't Read This if You Want to be Happy To-day,' and was signed 'The Author of _The Ballad of Reading Gaol_.' _The Ballad of Reading Gaol_ was published early in this same year under the _nom de plume_ 'C.3.3.,' Oscar Wilde's prison number. Its authorship was acknowledged shortly afterwards in an autograph edition. Since that time countless editions of this famous work have been issued in England and America, and translations have appeared in French, German and Spanish. Of this poem a reviewer in a London journal said,--'The whole is awful as the pages of Sophocles. That he has rendered with his fine art so much of the essence of his life and the life of others in that _inferno_ to the sensitive, is a memorable thing for the social scientist, but a much more memorable thing for literature. This is a simple, a poignant, a great ballad, one of the greatest in the English language.' Of the sorrows and sufferings of the last few years of his life, his friend Mr. Robert Harborough Sherard has written in _The Story of an Unhappy Friendship_, and M. Gide refers to them in the following pages. After several weeks of intense suffering 'Death the silent pilot' came at last, and the most brilliant writer of the nineteenth century passed away on the afternoon of November 30th, 1900, in poverty and almost alone. The little hotel in Paris--Hotel d'Alsace, 13 rue des Beaux Arts,--where he died, has become a place of pilgrimage from all parts of the world for those who admire his genius or pity his sorrows. He was buried, three days later, in the cemetery at Bagneux, about four miles out of Paris. STUART MASON. [1] In 1890 Lady Wilde received a pension of £50 from the Civil List. [2] The subject for this year, 1874, was 'The Fragments of the Greek Comic Poets, as edited by Meineke.' The medal was presented annually, from a fund left for the purpose by Bishop Berkeley. [3] The demyship was of the annual value of £95, and was tenable for five years. Oscar Wilde's success was announced in the _University Gazette_ (Oxford), July 11, 1874. [4] On Wednesday, May 1st, Oscar Wilde, dressed as Prince Rupert, was present at a fancy dress ball given by Mrs. George Herbert Morrell at Headington Hill Hall.