to receive punishment for their offences, and to
learn to do better for the future. Yet such in reality is the case. You
are standing outside the City House of Correction, which was built some
few years ago at a cost of 100,000_l._ Into this place it is rare for
good characters to obtain an admission. They may knock at the door, but
it will not be opened unless they are furnished with an order from the
Secretary of State, or one of the visiting magistrates, who are aldermen
of London city.

In this necessarily short paper it is not our intention to describe the
general arrangements of a place which we fear to too many of its inmates
can have but few terrors. There are homes outside of filth, and want,
and degradation; where, morning, noon, and night all that is decent, that
is tender, or true, or pure is crushed out of man, woman, and child;
where you can scarce believe man was made in the image of his Maker, that
he is a little lower than the angels; where you feel that rather than
have company with such you would associate with the beasts of the field,
or dwell in some lonely isle "far off amid the melancholy main." To
such, such a place as Holloway, with its cleanliness, and fresh air, and
wholesome food, educational advantages, and considerate attendance, must
be simply--in spite of its drawbacks of the treadmill, &c.--a millennium;
and the question arises whether we have hit on the most effectual mode of
making the dread of jail an incentive to the criminal class to keep out.
Another question also suggests itself: Is it right thus to tenderly treat
dishonesty, when honest poverty in our midst undoubtedly fares so bad?
Here, however, that subject cannot be discussed, neither can we touch on
that other question, at this time strongly agitating the aldermanic mind,
as to the propriety of allowing prisoners to have a religion of their
own, and to be attended by their own religious ministers--a question the
majority of the court evidently think absurd, for, as Alderman Cotton
observed--and our readers must remember Alderman Cotton aspired to the
honour of a seat in Parliament,--"if every dissenting sect were to apply
for facilities for the celebration of their religious services, what
would become of them? They should have to give the Baptists a pool to
bathe in, the Mormons a harem, and the Shakers a circle in which they
might make their dance." Of course, then, when I write of a Sunday in
Holloway jail, I writ