The monks of Melrose made gude kail On Fridays, when they fasted; And wanted neither beef nor ale So long us their neighbours lasted. At all events, the poor man began to imagine that there was no such potluck for him as he could get every day of the year in any penitentiary throughout the land. He and his little ones were starving on a crust of bread, and cast envious looks at the tabby waiting about the area gate for the daily visit of the cats’-meat-man. Why should he not have as good a dinner as the felon who had broken into the house with his centre-bit, or had broken the bank with his frauds? Why should he pace homewards day after day, pale-cheeked, hollow-eyed, with sinking heart and hungry blood, all for the crime of being honest? A cry of indignation rose throughout the country. If people did not go the length of supposing that our prisoners are fed on turtle-soup, and sleep on feather-beds, they declared at least that the management of prisons is such as to place a heavy premium on crime. The criminal is not punished, but rewarded. Our philanthropy has gone too far. We are milksops. Gaolers are gentlemen; turnkeys are bland as the angels that opened the prison doors; they take care that hinges never grate harshly on the ear, and they shoot the bolts sweetly, softly, solemnly, as dying falls of music. Success to swindling! When swindlers are thus petted, who would not go to prison? Stone walls do not a prison make, nor iron bars a cage. Let us have jolly dinners with shut doors in preference to empty stomachs under the open sky. Instead of plenty to do, and nothing to eat, let us have the crank on Christian principles—that is, in a fine combination of texts of scripture and boiled beef. After all, there is not a little attraction in the fleshpots of Egypt, and for the sake of the garlic, the leeks and the feast of fat things, with which their souls are satisfied, the chosen Israel long to enter once more the house of bondage, rather than serve God in the wilderness on a diet of sparrows—for what else are quails, at least according to the London experience? Lost in those deserts of brick and mortar, which all great cities are—famished and faint as he treads “the stony-hearted Oxford Street”—the British workman is fain to enter the house of his bondage for the sake of the daily allowance of cooked meat—three ounces, without bone.