where Jews are present, should be in the nature of recognition, and not of worship. The Lord's Prayer may be the usual prayer. There may be special prayers for occasions, as for exhibition, first and last days, death of scholars or teachers. The Israelites, in their liturgy, have some prayers which are religious and patriotic, which would be admirable for school use. The Episcopal liturgy would furnish choice extracts in the composition of prayers. The exercise in the manual of morals should be as frequent as once a week. An hour might profitably be given to it. The text of the lesson should be well studied, and carefully recited; after which scholars might discuss the topic freely, under their teacher's direction. Much interest and effectiveness would be added to this moral study from the fact that all the scholars in a commonwealth might be studying the same topic together, such as Lawful Business, Use of Public Money; while the newspapers of the day, as in the case of the International Biblical Lessons, might strive which should furnish the most valuable discussion of the topic, and the most interesting illustrative materials. Such a devotional service would no longer seem unimportant, or unworthy the striving to maintain; but a few years would place it among the permanent American institutions; God would be honored, and his blessing invoked; righteousness would flourish, "instead of the thorn, the fir-tree; instead of the brier, the myrtle;" the tone of public morality would be immeasurably elevated; "whatsoever things are true, honest, just, pure, lovely, of good report, whatever virtue, whatever praise," would be more in the thought and the life; we should have a "nationality with a quickened conscience;" "AND, CAST IN SOME DIVINER MOULD, WILL THE NEW CYCLE SHAME THE OLD." THE STATE INSTITUTIONS AND RE LIGION. In the year 1755, John Howard, having recently laid his wife in her last resting-place, set out from England to make a tour of the Continent. It was the year of the Lisbon earthquake. For that city he sailed. "The ship was taken by a French privateer. Howard was made prisoner. The treatment he met was inhuman. For forty hours he was kept with the other prisoners on board the French vessel, without water, and with hardly a morsel of food. They were then carried into Brest, and committed to the castle. They were flung into a dungeon; and, after a further period of starvation, a joint of mutton was at length thrown into the midst of them, which, for the want of accommodation of so much as a solitary knife, they were obliged to tear to pieces, and gnaw like dogs.' There was nothing in the dungeon to sleep on, except some straw; and in such a place, and with such treatment, he and his fellow-prisoners remained a week." He was then removed to Morlaix. "But," says Bayne,1“he did not remain idle. The sufferings he had witnessed while inmate of a French prison would not let him rest. He had seen something amiss, something unjust, something which pained his heart as a feeling man. His English sense of order and of work was outraged. There was something to be done, and he set himself to do it. He collected information respecting the state of English prisoners of war in France. He 1 Peter Bayne, Christian Life, 102: Howard and the Rise of Philanthropy. 325 found that his own treatment was part, and nowise a remarkable part, of a system ; that many hundreds of these prisoners had perished through sheer ill-usage, and that thirty-six had been buried in a hole at Dinan in one day. In fact, he discovered that he had come upon an abomination and iniquity on the face of the earth, which, strangely enough, had been permitted to go on unheeded until it had reached that frightful excess. He learned its extent, and departed with his information for England. He was permitted to cross the Channel on pledging his word to return if a French officer was not exchanged for him.” By his exertions, the inmates of the three prisons soon put their feet on the soil of their native land. "Howard modestly remarks, that perhaps his sufferings on this occasion increased his sympathy with the inhabitants of prisons." Returned to England, Howard married again, felicitously. After a delightful seven years spent in Cardington, which, under their fostering care, blossomed like the rose, his beloved wife died (1765). "Not long after her death, he heard the call which bade him leave the wells and the palm-trees of rest to take his road along the burning sand of duty." In 1773 he was appointed sheriff of Bedford. He was struck and amazed at the condition of the jails. In his plain, direct, penetrating way, he sought information; then began to go beyond the county in search of prison abuses; next crossed over to the Continent, and made wide researches; and in 1777 he published his first book on the "State of Prisons in England and Wales." That has been called "the beginning of prison science." Again and again he visited Europe, even to Constantinople and distant Russia. Invited by the Empress Catherine to visit the palace, he declined, saying that he had come to the capital to visit, not palaces, but prisons. I cannot name this gentleman," says Burke, "without remarking that his labors and writings have done much to open the eyes and hearts of mankind. He has visited all Europe, not to survey the sumptuousness of palaces or the stateliness of temples; not to make accurate measurements of the remains of ancient grandeur, nor 1 1 Speech at Guildhall in Bristol, 1780. |