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.

The death of Henry VIII., which took place on January 28th 1547, opened a new and busy scene, and affected in several important points the situation of Elizabeth.

The testament by which the parliament had empowered the king to regulate the government of the country during his son's minority, and even to settle the order of succession itself, with as full authority as the distribution of his private property, was the first object of attention; and its provisions were found strongly characteristic of the temper and maxims of its author. He confirmed the act of parliament by which his two daughters had been rendered capable of inheriting the crown, and appointed to each of them a pension of three thousand pounds, with a marriage-portion of ten thousand pounds, but annexed the condition of their marrying with the consent of such of his executors as should be living. After them, he placed in order of succession Frances marchioness of Dorset, and Eleanor countess of Cumberland, daughters of his younger sister the queen-dowager of France by Charles Brandon duke of Suffolk; and failing the descendants of these ladies he bequeathed the crown to the next heir.

The maritime war with Spain, notwithstanding the cautious temper of the queen, was strenuously waged during the year 1591, and produced some striking indications of the rising spirit of the English navy.

A squadron under lord Thomas Howard, which had been waiting six months at the Azores to intercept the homeward bound ships from Spanish America, was there surprised by a vastly more numerous fleet of the enemy which had been sent out for their convoy. The English admiral got to sea in all haste and made good his retreat, followed by his whole squadron excepting the Revenge, which was entangled in a narrow channel between the port and an island. Sir Richard Grenville her commander, after a vain attempt to break through the Spanish line, determined, with a kind of heroic desperation, to sustain alone the conflict with a whole fleet of fifty-seven sail, and to confront all extremities rather than strike his colors. From three o'clock in the afternoon till day-break he resisted, by almost incredible efforts of valor, all the force which could be brought to bear against him, and fifteen times beat back the boarding parties from his deck. At length, when all his bravest had fallen, and he himself was disabled by many wounds; his powder also being exhausted, his small-arms lost or broken, and his ship a perfect wreck, he proposed to his gallant crew to sink her, that no trophy might remain to the enemy.

During the period of English history included in our present survey, the nobility continued for the most part to inhabit their ancient castles; edifices which, originally adapted by strength of situation and construction merely to defence, were now in many instances, by the alteration of the original buildings and by the accession of additional ones, become splendid palaces. Among these it may be sufficient to mention Kennelworth, renowned for gorgeous festivities, where the earl of Leicester was reported to have expended 60,000 pounds in buildings.

Some curious notices of the habitations of the time are preserved in Leland's Itinerary, written about 1535, as in the following description of Wresehill-castle near Howden in Yorkshire:—‘Most part of the base court is of timber. The castle is moted about on three parts; the fourth part is dry, where the entry is into the castle. Five towers, one at each corner; the gateway is the fifth, having five lodgings in height; three of the other towers have four lodgings in height; the fourth containeth the buttery, pantry, pastry, lardery, and kitchen. In one of the towers a study called Paradise, where was a closet in the middle of eight squares latticed, about and at the top of every square was a desk lodged to set books on, &c. The garde robe in the castle was exceeding fair, and so were the gardens within the mote and the orchards without; and in the orchards were mounts opere topiario writhen about with degrees like turnings of a cockle-shell, to come to top without pain.’

The first yard you enter is for felons, tried and untried, boys and men; at the end of this is an open iron railing, within is the narrow airing place of the infirmary; beyond is the vagrants' court, equally connected with the infirmary by open iron work. Thus the patients communicate with the vagrants on one side, and the felons on the other; nothing surely could be more admirably contrived for the interchange of physical and moral contagion.

Many of the wards, in which the prisoners sleep, are sunk below the level of the ground, and this level is considered to be below high water mark. The up-stairs rooms of the Governor's house are much affected with damp; hearing this from himself, I could not suspect the truth of the statements of the prisoners, who complained bitterly of the cold and moisture of these cells. To obviate these inconveniences, as many as possible crowd together at night into the same cell;–how injurious this must be to health, can be conceived by the statement of the jailer, who told me that having occasion lately to open one of the doors in the night, the effluvia was almost intolerable. My readers will naturally ask–what is the result of these precautions against health? I will answer by facts. We saw a woman lying in one of the wards, who seemed very ill.