stoop and gamble. Here the inmates assemble on occasion; and, in the lapses of their profanity, repeat their unintelligible prayers, and chant their mocking praises. Here, also, criminals condemned to be executed are confined; for the three last days of their lives, to solitary meditation and penance; while their fellow-prisoners assemble opposite the door, at stated intervals, and strike up chants and hymns, by way of ushering them with due solemnity to the confines of another world, and furnishing a salutary warning to all parties concerned in the affair.
About a hundred and fifty of these male prisoners are every day escorted into the public streets, to act as scavengers. It is a revolting sight to behold these men led forth under a strong guard, and to note their dogged and malicious aspect, the evil looks they cast upon their escort, and the writhing unwillingness they evince to exertion of any kind: still they are made to labour on, chained in couples like so many galley-slaves. This exercise might be salutary to themselves, as well as to the public; were it not for the unfrequency of its occurrence to each prisoner (they are selected in turn), and for the excesses
