I was contemplating this gloomy mansion, an officer came out much surprised, and I was forced to retreat through the mute guard, and thus regained that freedom which, for one locked up within those walls, it is next to impossible to obtain.' On this singular adventure of Mr. Howard one of his biographers makes the following remark. 'In the space of four centuries, from the foundation to the destruction of the Bastile, perhaps Mr. Howard was the only person that was ever compelled to quit it reluctantly.' Although denied admission to the Bastile, Mr. Howard was able to obtain entrance into the other prisons of Paris. His first application, indeed, for admittance to the Grand Chatelet was unsuccessful; but happening to remark that, by the tenth article of the arrêt of 1717, jailers were authorized to admit persons desirous of bestowing charity on the prisoners, he pleaded it before the Commissaire de la Prison; and in this way gained admission not only to that prison, but to the others. Except for the horrible subterranean dungeons, in which he found that certain classes of prisoners were sometimes confined in France, he appears to have considered the prisons in that country better managed than those of England.
Mr. Howard's proceedings in France, French Flanders, and the Netherlands, will be best gathered from the following letter to a friend:—'I came late last night to this city; the day I have employed in visiting the jails, and collecting all the criminal laws, as I have got those of France. However rigorous they may be, yet their great care and attention to their prisons is worthy of commendation: all fresh and clean; no jail distemper; no prisoners ironed. The bread allowance far exceeds that of any of our jails; for example, every prisoner here has two pounds of bread a-day; once a-day, soup; and on Sunday, one pound of meat. I write to you, my friend, for a relaxation from what so much engrosses my thoughts. And indeed I force myself to the public dinners and suppers for that purpose, though I show so little respect to a set of men who are so highly esteemed (the French cooks), that I have not tasted fish, flesh, or fowl since I have been this side the water. Through a kind Providence I am very well; calm, easy in spirits. The public voitures have not been crowded, and I have met, in general, agreeable company. I hope to be in Holland the beginning of next week.'
After visiting the principal prisons in Holland and part of Germany, most of which seem to have particularly pleased him, when contrasted with those at home, Mr. Howard returned to England in the end of July, 1775. Not to rest, however; for he immediately commenced a second survey of the English prisons. This was interrupted, in the beginning of the year 1776, when he made a trip to Switzerland to visit the Swiss jails, taking some of the French ones in his way. Returning to England, he resumed his second survey of the English and Welsh prisons; and when this was completed to his satisfaction in the beginning of 1777, he took up his residence for the spring at the town of Warrington, in Lancashire, where he had resolved to have his work on prisons printed. His reasons for printing the book there, rather than in London, were various; one of them was, that he wished to be near his friend Dr. (then Mr.) Aikin, employed as a surgeon in Warrington, whose literary talents were of assistance to him in fitting the work for publication. Dr. Aikin gives the following account of the process which Mr. Howard's notes underwent, in
