The committee arrived therefore at the conviction “that the prosperity and well-being of the establishment must depend upon effecting a more strict seclusion of the prisoners, one from another.” At the same time a new chaplain, Mr. Whitworth Russell, who became largely identified with prisons and penal discipline, urgently recommended a greater development of religious instruction. He proposed that in future the open part of the Millbank chapel should be provided with benches, so that he might assemble daily, large classes for religious instruction. To these classes he was to devote three hours every morning, the schoolmaster performing the same duty in the afternoon. During the morning instruction by the chaplain this schoolmaster had to visit the prisoners, cell by cell, either collecting information, as to the previous habits and connections of the prisoners, or carrying on the instruction commenced at school or the lectures in chapel. In this we find the key-note of the new system that was from now on to prevail with increasing strength, till by and by, as we shall see, it grew to be altogether supreme. Never since the opening of Millbank, in 1817, had the spiritual welfare of the prisoners been forgotten, nor the hope abandoned of reforming them by religious influences. But now, and for years to come, the chaplain was to have the fullest scope. Whether much tangible benefit followed from his increasing ministrations, will be best shown in the later development of the narrative; but it cannot be denied that the efforts of Mr. Whitworth Russell, and of his successor, Mr. Nihil, who in himself combined the offices of governor and chaplain, were praiseworthy in the extreme. Speaking, however, with all due reverence, I cannot but think that their zeal was often misdirected; that conversion, such as it is, obtained by force almost, could never be either sincere or lasting; and in short, that the continued parade of sacred things tended rather to drag them into the mire, while the incessant religious exercises—the prayers, expositions, and genuflexions, were more in keeping with a monastery of monks than a gaol full of criminals.