At one time in English history such wretches were left to die by the wayside; at another time, they incurred the suspicion of being witches, and were either drowned or burnt; but in the reign of Queen Victoria the dull-witted nation has conceived it to be more humane to confine them in a prison, separate husband from wife, parent from child, and mete out to each inmate a daily task, and keep old and young under the strictest surveillance. At six in the morning they are all roused from sleep; and at 8 o’clock at night they are penned up in their dormitories. Bread, gruel, rice, and potatoes compose principally their fare, after being nicely weighed and measured. On Saturdays each person must undergo a thorough scrubbing, and on Sundays they must submit to two sermons, which treat of things never practised, and patiently kneel during a prayer as long as a sermon, in the evening. It is a fearful fate, that of a British outcast, because the punishment afflicts the mind and breaks the heart. It is worse than that which overtakes the felonious convict, because it appears so unmerited, and so contrary to that which the poor have a right to expect from a Christian and civilised people. Ages hence the nation will be wiser, and devise something more suited to the merits of the veteran toilers. It will convert these magnificent and spacious buildings into model houses for the poor, on the flat system, which may be done at little expense. The cruel walls which deprive the inmates of their liberty will be demolished, and the courts will be converted into grassy plats edged by flowering bushes. The stupid restraints on the aged will be abolished, husbands and wives will be housed together, their children will be restored to them after school hours. The bachelors and spinsters will dwell apart, the orphans will be placed in orphanages, the idiots in asylums, and the able-bodied tramp and idler in penitentiaries, and these costly structures will lose their present opprobrious character. But now, as in 1847, the destitute aged and the orphans, the vagabonds and the idiots, are gathered into these institutions, and located in their respective wards according to age and sex. In that of St. Asaph the four wards meet in an octagonal central house, which contains the offices of the institution, and is the residence of the governor and matron.