Page:Pleasant Memories of Pleasant Lands.djvu/325

 MRS. FRY AT NEWGATE PRISON.

��BOLTS and bars, and the creaking of sullen hinges, and the clang of massy doors, and the meagre aspect of narrow, grated windows, how repulsive ! how the veins chill at passing these dreary thresholds ! and yet what mighty pains have we taken to arrive at this prison-house, and to gain admittance to its precincts. Riding through one of the most terribly dense London fogs, swallowing its mephitic atmosphere, saturated with coal in sickening mouthfuls, to our present annoyance as well as future peril plunging into black, glutinous mire, and all for what ? To be let in where multitudes are longing to be let out, where, for so many years such masses of human crime and misery have tossed, and fermented, and been cast forth to banishment and to death.

Well, here we are, indeed, at Newgate, seated in the midst of a throng of female convicts. How rude and hardened is the aspect of many of them, what savage and hateful glances do they bend on the unfallen. Here, too, are young faces, with curious, searching eyes, taking note of every ornament of dress, others

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