First. Those eminent men and close observers, De Beaumont and De Tocqueville, who visited this country from France, a few years after the opening of our Eastern Penitentiary, for the purpose of examining into the character of our institutions generally, in their work, entitled “Du Système Pénitentiaire Aux Etats-Unis” (the Penitentiary System in the United States), give some very satisfactory views with regard to the working of our Penitentiary, where they spent considerable time, visiting all the prisoners by permission of the authorities, and remaining in their cells in private sufficiently long to obtain from the inmates a knowledge of the practical working of the system upon them. This work, in the original French, and also an English translation of it, by Professor Francis Lieber,—himself eminent as a close observer, and deep thinker on the subject of penal laws and penal institutions, and their systems of discipline,—are to be found in the Society’s Library. The translation is accompanied by some very valuable Notes by the translator, and in an Appendix to it there is an Essay, by the same, treating specially on the “Pennsylvania System,” republished from the Encyclopædia Americana. A small volume, entitled, “Prisons and Prisoners,” by Joseph Kingsmill, chaplain of the “Pentonville Prison,” near London, conducted very much upon our system, is well worth reading. We would also refer to an elaborate “Essay on Cellular Separation,” written by our fellow-member, William Parker Foulke, under appointment by “the American Association for the improvement of Penal and Reformatory Institutions,” and read before that Association at the Annual Meeting, held in New York, in the autumn of 1860, as being an able exposition of our system. This Essay was published by our Society soon after its preparation. _Misstatements corrected._—In this connection, it is due to the cause of truth to say that Charles Dickens, the novelist, in his report of his visit to the Eastern Penitentiary, contained in his “American Notes,” makes representations so palpably erroneous, as to appear to those familiar with that institution and its government to be absolutely absurd. But as he uses the form of a direct reference to particular cases, strangers will more readily than they otherwise would adopt his statements as setting forth the truth. It should be remembered, however, that the celebrity to which this author has attained, is as a writer of “fiction,” not of truthful narrative or history. In this instance, (possibly without being aware of it), he has maintained the consistency of his literary character. The late William Peter, the worthy consul of Great Britain, residing in this city, soon after the book of Dickens was published, made a personal examination into each of the cases referred to, and in a letter to the late Job R. Tyson, thoroughly refuted the misrepresentations.