of the provisions of the bill will mitigate the principle of solitary confinement in a manner which was suggested by the Commission of 1840, and should not pass unnoticed by the Chamber.  Convicts sentenced to more than twelve years’ hard labor, or to perpetual hard labor, after having gone through twelve years of their punishment, or when they shall have attained the age of seventy, will be no longer separated from others, except during the night.”  The bill further provided, besides this mitigation of the solitary confinement system, that the “Bagnes,” where galley slaves had hitherto labored, should be replaced by houses of hard labor, and that smaller prisons should be erected for minor offenses instead of sending criminals convicted of them to the great central prisons.  The bill was certainly destined to effect a total revolution in the management of such places as St. Lazare and similar prisons, in addition to giving solid promise of improvement in the punitive system of France.

During this brief final visit to the French capital, Mrs. Fry entered on her sixty-third year, aged and infirm in body, but still animated by the master passion of serving the sad and sorrowful.  Her brother, Joseph John Gurney, together with his wife, were with her in Paris, but they pursued their journey into Switzerland, while she returned home in June, feeling that life’s shadows were lengthening apace, and that not much time remained to her in which to complete her work.  The impressions she had made on the society of the gay city had been altogether good.  Like the people who stared at the pilgrims passing through Vanity Fair, the Parisians wondered, and understood for the first time that here was a lady who did indeed pass through things temporal, “with eyes fixed on things eternal”; and whose supreme delight lay, not in ball-rooms, race-courses, or courts, but in finding out suffering humanity and striving to alleviate its woes.  Doubtless many of the gay Parisians shrugged their shoulders and smiled good-humoredly at the “illusion,” “notion,” “fanaticism,” or whatever else they called it; they were simply living on too low a plane of life to understand, or to criticise Mrs. Fry.  Except animated by somewhat of fellow-feeling, none can understand her career even now.  It stands too far apart from, too highly lifted above, our ordinary pursuits and pleasures, to be compared with anything that less philanthropic-minded mortals may do.  It called for a far larger amount of self-denial than ordinary people are capable of; it demanded too much singleness of purpose and sincerity of speech.  Had Mrs. Fry not come from a Quaker stock she might have conformed more to the ways and manners of fashionable society; had she possessed less of sterling piety, she might have sought to serve her fellow-creatures in more easy paths.  As a reformer, she was sometimes misunderstood, abused, and spoken evil of.  It was always the case and always will be, that reformers receive injustice.  Only, in some cases, as in this one, time reverses the injustice, and metes out due honor.  As a consequence, Elizabeth Fry’s name is surrounded with an aureola of fame, and her self-abnegation affords a sublime spectacle to thoughtful minds of all creeds and classes; for, simply doing good is seen to be the highest glory.