would issue forth, with his cock-up-nose and his hat on one side, as great a fop as a jockey. I remember his coming to my rooms, about the middle of my imprisonment, as if on purpose to insult over my ill health with the contrast of his own convalescence, putting his arms in a gay manner a-kimbo, and telling me I should never live to go out, whereas he was riding about as stout as ever, and had just been in the country. He died before I left prison. The word jail, in deference to the way in which it is sometimes spelt, he called gole; and Mr. Brougham he always spoke of as Mr. Bruffam. He one day apologized for this mode of pronunciation, or rather gave a specimen of his vanity and self-will, which will show the reader at once the high notions a jailer may entertain of himself: 'I find,' said he, that they calls him Broom; but, Mister,' (assuming a look from which there was to be no appeal,) I calls him Bruffam!"

66

Finding that my host did not think the prison fit for me, I asked if he would let me

have an apartment in his house.

He pronoun

ced it impossible; which was a trick to en

hance the price. I could not make an offer to please him; and he stood out so long, and, as he thought, so cunningly, that he subsequently overreached himself by his trickery; as the readers will see. His object was to keep me among the prisoners, till he could at once sicken me of the place, and get the permission of the magistrates to receive me into his house; which was a thing he reckoned upon as a certainty. He thus hoped to secure himself in all quarters; for his vanity was almost as strong as his avarice; he was equally fond of getting money in private, and of the approbation of the great men he had to deal with in public; and it so happened, that there had been no prisoner, above the poorest condition, before my arrival, with the exception of Colonel Despard. From abusing the prison, he then suddenly fell to speaking well of it, or rather of the room occupied by the Colonel, and said that another corresponding with it would make me a capital apartment. To be sure,' said he, 'there is nothing but bare walls, and I have no bed to put in it.' I replied, that of course I should not be hindered from having my own

6

bed from home. He said, 'No; and if it rains,' observed he, you have only to put up with want of light for a time.' 'What!' exclaimed I, are there no windows?' 'Windows, Mister!' cried he; 'no windows in a prison of this sort; no glass, Mister: but excellent

shutters.'

"It was finally agreed, that I should sleep for a night or two in a garret of the jailer's house, till my bed could be got ready in the prison and the windows glazed. A dreary evening followed, which, however, let me completely into the man's character, and showed him in a variety of lights, some ludicrous and others as melancholy. There was a full-length portrait, in the room, of a little girl, dizened out in her best. This, he told me, was his daughter, whom he had disinherited for disobedience. I tried to suggest a few reflections to him, capable of doing her service; but disobedience, I found, was an offence doubly irritating to his nature, on account of his sovereign habits as a jailer; and seeing his irritability likely to inflame the plethora of his countenance, I desisted. Though not allowed to

speak above a whisper, he was extremely willing to talk; but at an early hour I pleaded my own state of health, and retired to bed.

"On taking possession of my garret, I was treated with a piece of delicacy, which I never should have thought of finding in a prison. When I first entered its walls, I had been received by the under-jailer, a man who appeared an epitome of all that was forbidding in his office. He was short and very thick, had a hook nose, a great severe countenance, and a bunch of keys hanging on his arm. A friend once stopped short at sight of him, and said, in a melancholy tone, And this is the jailer!" Honest old Cave! thine outside would have been unworthy of thee, if upon farther acquaintance I had not found it a very hearty outside,―ay, and, in my eyes, a very goodlooking one, and as fit to contain the milk of human kindness that was in thee, as the husk of a cocoa. Was, did I say? I hope it is in thee still; I hope thou art alive to read this paper, and to perform, as usual, a hundred kind offices, as exquisite in their way as they are desirable and unlooked for. To finish at once

the character of this man,-I could never prevail on him to accept any acknowledgment of his kindness, greater than a set of tea-things, and a piece or two of old furniture which I could not well carry away. I had indeed the pleasure of leaving him in possession of a room I had papered; but this was a thing unexpected, and which neither of us had supposed could be done. Had I been a Prince, I would have forced on him a pension. Being a journalist, I made him accept an Examiner weekly, which, I trust, he still lives to relish his Sunday pipe with.

“This man, in the interval between my arrival and introduction to the head-jailer, had found means to give me farther information respecting my new condition, and to express the interest he took in it. I thought little of his offers at the time. He behaved with the greatest air of deference to his principal; moving as fast as his body would allow him, to execute his least intimation; and holding the candle to him while he read, with an obsequious zeal. But he had spoken to his wife about me, and his wife I found to be as great