and yet uninitiated, become familiar with every species of immorality. They are the haunts of the most depraved and abandoned characters, as well as the most miserable and suffering objects of the town, (_Manchester_,) and constitute one of the most influential causes of the physical and moral degradation of our laboring population.” Unless we are misinformed, the investigations now making by the Board of Health of Philadelphia, will reveal a state of things, not much behind, although on a smaller scale, those described in the foregoing extracts; and as regards New York, Dr. Griscom’s report, made a few years ago, exhibits a still darker picture. With the warnings on the other side of the Atlantic to deter us, we ought to have kept clear of these nuisances entirely. Let us, as we have imitated the people of Great Britain for evil, imitate them also for good, by instituting the same searching inquiries into the nature and extent of these physical and moral corruptions, that are recorded in the proceedings of the various Parliamentary committees and Royal Commissioners. In Glasgow, the lodging houses have been subjected to regular municipal supervision and ordinance, and, as we are told, with excellent effects. ART. III.--STATE PENITENTIARIES. I. _The Twentieth Annual Report of the Inspectors of the Eastern State Penitentiary of Pennsylvania, transmitted to the Senate and House of Representatives._ March 1849, pp. 36. II. _Report of the Board of Inspectors of the Western Penitentiary of Pennsylvania, for the year 1848, with the accompanying documents._ Pittsburg, 1849, pp. 21. III. _Report on the condition of the New Jersey State Prison, embracing the Reports of the Joint Committee, Inspectors, Keeper, Moral Instructor and Physician._ Trenton, January 1849, pp. 44. IV. _Documents relating to the State Prison._ Senate of Massachusetts, Document No. 5, pp. 24. I. The first document in the above list is worthy of a much more extended notice than our limits allow us to give. We shall notice its constituent parts in their order. (1.) In their report the inspectors refer with natural interest to the opening of the State Lunatic Asylum, which is expected to be completed as early as January 1851. For want of it, “instances have occurred in which the sheriff has been the medium of a message from the judge who pronounced the sentence, to the chief officer of the prison, informing him that the prisoner was insane, but that no other mode of providing for the case existed.” The subject of pardons occupies a prominent place in their report. It appears that but a fraction over six per cent. of the pardoned have been recommitted; and the percentage of pardons in relation to number, sex and color, cannot be so well set forth in any other way as by transferring the table to our pages. _Table showing the whole number of pardons granted from the establishment of the prison in 1829 to 9th July, 1848._