gion. Many remain unenlightened and uninterested on the subject. After all that has been done and published during the last fifty years, it is mortifying to know that only a few years ago new prisons were erected in Boston, without any regard to the improvements which had been elsewhere adopted and proved to be all-important. This could not have been, had the public mind been properly attentive to the subject. The same thing from the same cause is likely to happen in other places, and thus to render vain the toils of Howard and his laborious followers. That it may not be so, information on the subject must be diffused as widely as possible. The rising generation must be imbued with it. They must be made to grow up and to enter on life with a feeling, that, as citizens and as Christians, they are to have a concern for this wretched portion of society, and to do something toward aiding their return to virtue and to God. We beg our young readers to peruse the present volume with this thought in their minds; and when they have acquainted themselves with the remarkable things which it records, and have learned to ad mire the good man whom it commemorates, let them not suffer their interest in it to die away; let them remember that there are prisons and sufferings in the midst of them; and that they have it in their power in some degree to imitate the excellence they admire, by their sympathy, their prayers, their contributions, or their personal services, according as their situation and opportunities may allow. They may not become Howards; but they may do something to prevent Howard's labors from being in vain. Cambridge, 16 June, 1833. H. W., Jr. CONTENTS. Mr. Howard's Attempt to visit Portugal - His Captivity He returns to England - Settles at Cardington - His Second Marriage State of English Prisoners - Mr. Howard exam- ined before the House of Commons His Sec- ond Tour of Inspection - He is a Candidate Book - Short Account of his Son - Anecdotes of Howard when travelling-Second Foreign 129 Warsaw - Anecdote of Mr. Howard and Prussian Courier - Arrival in England - A Mr. Howard's Fifth Foreign Tour of Inspection - Portuguese Convicts on Parole Spain - Prisons of the Inquisition - Letter from Pam- - 174 |