but certain it is that some three years passed by before any very active steps were taken by her to ameliorate to any decided extent the misery of the prisoners.
But the matter seethed in her mind; as she mused upon it, the fire burned, and the spirit which had to burst its conventional trammels and "take up the cross" in regard to dress and speech, looked out for other crosses to carry. Doing good became a passion; want, misery, sin, and sorrow furnished claims upon her which she would neither ignore nor deny.
John Howard had grappled with the hydra before her, and finally succumbed to his exertions. As the period of his labours lay principally between the years 1774 and 1790, when the evils against which Mrs. Fry had to contend were intensified and a hundred times blacker, it cannot do harm to recall the condition of prisons in England during the last quarter of the eighteenth century; that is, during the girlhood of Elizabeth Fry. Possibly some echoes of the marvellous exertions of Howard in prison-reform had reached her Earlham home, and produced, though unconsciously, an interest in the subject which was destined to bear fruit at a later period. At any rate, the fact cannot be gainsaid that she followed in his steps, visiting the Continent in the prosecution of her self-imposed task, and examining into the most loathsome recesses of prisons, lunatic asylums, and hospitals.
The penal systems of England had been on their trial; had broken down, and been found utterly wanting. Modern legislation and philanthropy have laid it down that reform is the proper end of all punishment; hence the "silent system," the "separate system," and various employments have been adopted. Hence, too, arose the framing of a system of education
