the Old Bailey; for underneath the fetters
there are many other suggestive things. That
half door- the barrier between liberty and
freedom, surmounted by spikes, curled corkscrew-wise,
ike the snakes in the furies' lovelocks.
The gloomy, roomy, dusky lodge where
there are more fetters I know, and bluff turnkeys
with huge bunches of keys, and many
many more doors leading into stone corridors
and grim paved yards, at the end of which
are other doors. That tremendous black
board in the lodge covered with the tedious
inscription in white paint. Do the turnkeys
ever read it, I wonder? Do the Lord Mayor
and Sheriffs? Does the ordinary? Did ever
a criminal brought from the dark van into
the darker prison read that inscription
through, I should like to know? I opine
that what is written upon it must be something
about prison rules, acts of parliament,
the Lord Mayor and Sheriffs, with a possible
allusion to the Common Council and the
Court of Lieutenancy, but I can fancy, with
a shudder, how it must read, if read at all,
to the handcuffed man who stands in the entrance
lodge of Newgate, fully committed.
Did you ever read a writ, and see Victoria by
the Grace of God dancing about the paper
with Lord John Campbell at Westminster,
until there seemed to be fifty sovereign ladies
and fifty chief justices conglomerated into the
narrow strip? Did you ever read a letter in
which it was told you that a dear friend was
dead; and though the manner of his death
was therein set down at length, see nothing
but dead! forty times in every line of forty?
Did you ever receive a ten-pound note when
you were desperately poor, and at bay with
hunger, and find nothing but tens all over the
note- ten Mr. Mathew Marshals, ten Britannias,
ten times ten promises to pay ten pounds?
Some such optical reiteration must there
appear to the prisoner who gazes on the sad
black board, I should think. Or, his thoughts
full of fear and horror must fly to the board,
and fixing themselves there, multiply themselves
horribly in a medley of despair. Fully
committed, fully committed. To the place
from whence you came. From whence you
came. For the term of your natural life.
Your natural life. Your life. By the neck
until you be dead. Be dead. And the Lord
have mercy on your soul. Your soul.

The pot-boy who carries beer into the lodge
of Newgate; the unshaven man from the
coffee-shop opposite, who brings hot coffee
and thick wedges of bread and butter; the
waiter from the eating-house do not trouble
themselves much about the philosophy of
prison-doors, I dare say. Nor does the Lord
Mayor himself condescend, I should think, to
hang about the door of Newgate and descant
in a rambling, vagabond fashion on it. By the
way, I could pass a pleasantly profitable hour
by his lordship's own door in Charlotte Row,
Mansion House. I could say something neat,
had I time, about the tremendous flunkies-
the absurd people with bald heads and wig-bags
(what on earth can a bald wigless man
want with a wig-bag sewn on to the collar of
his coat?) and court dresses, who drive up in
tinsel chariots to the door of the civic king.
Also about the smell of hot meats that comes
gushing from the door from above and below
it on the night that the Lord Mayor has
"spreads." The Lord Mayor's door would
fill some pages of instructive reading, and I
will book it. But what should "Moon-Mayor"
care about the door of Newgate?
What should the turnkeys care about it,
save to see that it is properly bolted and
barred every night? What should the policemen,
those unconcerned stoics, to whom all
the world are but so many million men, women,
and children-  so many of whom have
been or have not been in custody- but probably
will be, some day? But to the prisoner
the gaol-door must be awfully suggestive-
full of dreadful memories- for ever and
ever.

The prison-door is the gate of horn that
will substitute itself for the gate of ivory,
in his dreams of pleasant crime. At the
door he leaves the world,- wife, children,
friends;- exchanges the apparel of his station,
be it satin or serge, for one uniform
livery of degradation- leaves behind his
very name, and becomes number ninety-six.
On one side of the door- love, friendship,
wealth, wine, tobacco, music- all; on the
other side a cell, gruel, spiked-walls, silence,
solitude, coarse rugs, keys, a man in a gray
jacket and trousers marked with a number,
and doors. Doors open and shut to let him
pass to chapel, exercise, dinner, punishment,
execution. The last thing he hears at night
is the echoing clang of the door as the
turnkey shuts him in his lonely cell. The first
thing he watches for, in the morning is the
noise of the key turning in the lock of the
door. That door may creakingly turn upon
its hinges soon, and bring the governor with a
discharge. It may bring the chaplain with
the last fatal tidings. At the gaol door money
and victuals, and letters, when the prisoner is
allowed to receive them, are left. Nor farther
than the door can the wife and children who
love him in spite of all his crimes, all his
brutality, all his madness,- come; save at
rare intervals; when they can see and speak
to him through more doors- double doors of
iron bars- with a turnkey sitting in the space
between. At the door waits for him, when
the term of his imprisonment has expired, the
haggard woman with bruises scarcely yet
healed, for outraging whom the prison door
was closed on him six months since. She
waits for him in love and patience and long-suffering;
or now it is the mother, whose
heart he has broken, and whose gray hairs he
is bringing with sorrow to the grave, who,
forlorn, trusting old woman waits to give him
money and clothes, and hales him into a cook-shop,
that he may eat a hearty meal of