"At the end of the week I was had up to Bow Street once more; and the evidence was so conclusive against me, that I was committed to Newgate for trial. This I had expected, and cared but little for, as Mrs. Bunce at each visit which she paid me at Clerkenwell Prison, assured me that Mr. Bones would do all he could for me. And he kept his word—but more, I suppose, for his own sake than mine. What a dreadful place I found Newgate to be! Hardened as I was—acquainted with all degrees of debauchery—and familiar with vice, I declare solemnly that I shrank from the scenes I there witnessed. Fighting, quarrelling, gambling, thieving, drinking, obscene talking, bullying, and corrupting each other,—all those took place to a great degree in the Clerkenwell Prison; but in Newgate they were carried out to an extent dreadful to think of, and associated with other crimes impossible to mention.[21] "I now seemed to awake, for the first time, from a long dream of wickedness, and to become aware of the frightful precipice on which I stood. My eyes were suddenly opened—and I shuddered. A man was hanged at the debtors' door, while I was in Newgate: and I saw him pass from the condemned cell to the kitchen, which is just within the debtors' door. I experienced a sudden revulsion of feeling, and took a solemn oath within my own breast that I would never thieve again. But as I knew nothing of religion, and could not read or write, I was not likely to reform very rapidly nor very completely. I still laughed and joked with my fellow-prisoners, and appeared to enter into most of their fun, though I really began to loathe them. But when the chaplain visited us, and the other boys jeered and mocked him, I stood by and dwelt on every word of gentle remonstrance that fell from his lips. Next Sunday I paid great attention to his sermon, while pretending to be asleep: for if I had been caught actually lending a patient ear to his discourse, my fellow-prisoners would have led me no peace afterwards. I understood but little—very little of that sermon: still I gleaned some notion of the existence of a Saviour a belief in whom was the stepping-stone to virtue. I also heard the happiness of heaven explained for the first time: but I must confess that I was greatly puzzled when the chaplain declared that the man who was hanged for a dreadful murder on the preceding Monday, had gone to that place of joy, because he had repented in his last moments—for I thought to myself, 'Well, then, a human being is quite safe in leading as terrible a life as he chooses, as long as he repents at the end.' And, again, I was bewildered when I heard the clergyman say these words, which made so great an impression on me that I have never forgotten them, and never shall:—'_As I stood with that penitent man on the drop, last Monday morning_, I ENVIED HIM HIS FATE, _because I knew that his soul was about to ascend to heaven_!'[22]