tenderness and reverence, and melted into tears.[78] To reproach his labors would be a sin against mankind; but an over-estimate of their effect, diminished the moral weight of their example. "Dr. Browning's pets" became marked men; their conduct was watched with curiosity, often with ill-will, and their lapses were reckoned up with exultation. The ample provision for the accommodation, exercise, and food of the prisoners, has been of late years a topic of complaint. They require more care, and a diet more nicely chosen, than laborers in health and mental tranquillity. Efforts to reduce these comforts have been followed by fever and physical prostration; and whatever aspect their treatment may wear, those who deprive them of liberty are bound to provide for their safety. The law sentences to transportation: no question of public policy could justify a minister, when converting that penalty into a sentence of death.[79] Notwithstanding the length of the voyage, the navigation of convict vessels has been fortunate: for thirty years no vessel had been lost. The merchant ships met with the average of accidents; but the transports were supposed, by the curious, to be under a peculiar destiny. They attributed their safe passage to the force of the proverb, which implies that the trident of Neptune is powerless against the heritage of the executioner. A succession of calamities, in the navigation of convict vessels, changed the aspect of their fortune, and filled all classes with commiseration: such was the wreck of the _Amphitrite_, in 1833, which struck on the coast of Bologne. That vessel was in a position of great danger, and the French pilot, Heuret, endeavoured to warn, in time to save; but the risk of the usual reward, it is said, the surgeon was unwilling to incur; and the captain, not less indisposed to forfeit his bond, which included a penalty for every prisoner who might escape. Their hesitation was fatal to themselves: the women were not permitted to come on deck, or to avail themselves of the opportunity to save their lives. These unfortunate females, to the number of 103, with their children, were drowned; and their naked corpses, floating to the coast of France, exhibited an appalling spectacle. The French and English mingled their tears, as they beheld the bodies strewed along the beach--some models of feminine beauty, others disfigured by the recent concussions; among the rest, a young mother, with her child clasped in her arms. Nor does it appear that the instructions of the government had ever foreseen or provided for such dangers, or authorised the temporary release of prisoners, when the situation of the ship might require their liberation.