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in a speech of great lucidity and power. Said he, when laying it before the Chamber:—“Our object is not entirely to sequestrate the prisoner nor to confine him to absolute solitude. Some of the provisions of the Bill will mitigate the principle of solitary confinement in a manner which was suggested by the Commission of 1840, and should not pass unnoticed by the Chamber. Convicts sentenced to more than twelve years’ hard labour, or to perpetual hard labour, after having gone through twelve years of their punishment, or when they shall have attained the age of seventy, will be no longer separated from others, except during the night.” The Bill further provided, beside this mitigation of the solitary confinement system, that the “Bagnes,” where galley slaves had hitherto laboured, should be replaced by houses of hard labour, and that smaller prisons should be erected for minor offences instead of sending criminals convicted of them to the great central prisons. The Bill was certainly destined to effect a total revolution in the management of such places as St. Lazare and similar prisons, in addition to giving solid promise of improvement in the punitive system of France. During this brief final visit to the French capital, Mrs. Fry entered on her sixty-third year, aged and infirm in body, but still animated by the master passion of serving the sad and sorrowful. Her brother, Joseph John Gurney, together with his wife, were with her in Paris, but they pursued their journey into Switzerland, while she returned home in June, feeling that life's shadows were lengthening apace, and that not much time remained to her in which to complete her work. The impressions she had made on the society of the gay city had been altogether good. Like the people who stared at the pilgrims passing through