Having thus entered into a detail of prisons–in London, in Middlesex, in Hertfordshire, and irt Surrey. I abstain from exhausting the patience of my reader by any further local description of this kind;–because I have the presumption to think that nothing more is necessary to establish the accuracy of each charge which I have made against our present system of prison discipline. Let no one, however, conclude, that those prisons in the vicinity of London, which are not mentioned, are free from every possible imputation. I could dispense with the Borough Compter, Tothill-fields, St. Albans, and Guildford; and yet establish my case beyond all contradiction. There are undoubtedly gradations in the inhumanity which is practised towards prisoners, and in (I may say) the exertions which are used to corrupt them; yet the same principle reigns very generally throughout. This will be best illustrated by a few facts: at the House of Correction at Chelmsford, I was advised by the jailer not to enter, as sickness was very prevalent: it appeared that one youth had died in the morning, of the small-pox, and one was (as it was supposed) dying of the Typhus Fever. The County jail at Kingston, is, in most respects, a counterpart of that of Guildford: the same want of work, clothing, cleanliness, and classification; and the same report from the jailer, of the encreasing depravity of the prisoners.

On the 7th of September 1533, at the royal palace of Greenwich in Kent, was born, under circumstances as peculiar as her after-life proved eventful and illustrious, Elizabeth daughter of king Henry VIII. and his queen Anne Boleyn.

Delays and difficulties equally grievous to the impetuous temper of the man and the despotic habits of the prince, had for years obstructed Henry in the execution of his favourite project of repudiating, on the plea of their too near alliance, a wife who had ceased to find favor in his sight, and substituting on her throne the youthful beauty who had captivated his imagination. At length his passion and his impatience had arrived at a pitch capable of bearing down every obstacle. With that contempt of decorum which he displayed so remarkably in some former, and many later transactions of his life, he caused his private marriage with Anne Boleyn to precede the sentence of divorce which he had resolved that his clergy should pronounce against Catherine of Arragon; and no sooner had this judicial ceremony taken place, than the new queen was openly exhibited as such in the face of the court and the nation.

An unusual ostentation of magnificence appears to have attended the celebration of these august nuptials. The fondness of the king for pomp and pageantry was at all times excessive, and on this occasion his love and his pride would equally conspire to prompt an extraordinary display.