far as the resources of the establishment permit, as to the particular trade he prefers; and, if he chooses to be industrious, he may earn a considerable gratuity, carefully saved up for him by the Government, and amounting at the end of a long term of punishment to £20, and sometimes even £40! At Portland, where there is out-door work, some are employed in blacksmiths' shops, some at bricklayer's or mason's work, but the majority work in the quarries. In winter they work about eight and a half hours, in summer nine hours daily; but they take it very easily, five of them doing no more than is accomplished by two free labourers working for hire! This explains why criminals make so light of what is termed hard labour. Should a shower fall, they are actually marched off to sheds for protection, while the honest labourer plods on through foul and fair! At noon the latter sits down, when he works, to his poor dinner of bread and cheese, with some occasional scrap in the way of relish, and a jug of sober coffee; while the convict is marched to quarters, where he first makes his toilet, and then sits down to his ample and savoury dinner, either in solitary enjoyment, or in a snug little mess of some half-dozen.

We have already mentioned what is the usual "run of the kitchen;" but convicts who choose to behave so decorously as to obtain the "fruits of good living," in the only sense which they seem

capable of appreciating, may obtain a standard of moral excellence which is marked by an ascending scale of "suet-dumpling, baked meat, treacledumpling, cheese, and beer!" These creaturecomforts, the regularity of habits, the cleanliness, and the "constitutional" labour which the convicts undergo, all tend to keep him in tip-top health and good spirits, and are an agreeable and refreshing change after the irregular hand-to-mouth, feast-andfast sort of lives which they have led previous to imprisonment. At length, when there is no real regard for social and moral amendment, even this regular and easy life palls, and the convict, unchanged in heart, sighs for enlargement, with all its roving licentiousness. In many cases he quits a prison a more depraved being than he was when he entered it. This is caused not only by the misdirection of what is intended to be reformatory treatment, but by the directly injurious consequences arising from a promiscuous intercourse among the convicts which it is impossible to prevent. It may be easily imagined that the conversation which prevails on such occasions is not of the most refined or edifying character. "Old hands" recount their criminal exploits with great gusto to groups of admiring "greenhorns," who thus learn the arts of housebreaking, lock and pocket picking, and the scientific use of the bludgeon or lifepreserver. In short, such a system is neither a

terror to evil-doers nor a praise and protection to such as do well. When its natural tendencies are considered, the results, as manifested by the increase and atrocity of crime, cease to be matter of wonder.

A return to our former system of transportation has been generally recommended as a ready and effectual means of getting rid of the evils of penal servitude. Transportation has not been altogether discontinued, but it is resorted to in comparatively few instances. Formerly, for many years, it was a ready outlet for criminals; and the home country had thus good riddance of them, while their labour was of great importance to our nascent colonies. By convicts all great and useful Government works were executed; and not a few of them were usefully employed by private individuals. In those days transportation was awarded for comparatively light offences, and in other cases not implying great depravity of character. Not a few convicts, therefore, betaking themselves resolutely to honest industry, attained, in process of time, much wealth and consequent consideration. They had chances of well-doing which they never could have commanded at home, where even their merited prosperity was rather unlikely than otherwise to cause their unfortunate antecedents to be overlooked. Besides, in our Australian colonies there was boundless scope for enterprise. There was society for those of a social turn; there were "fresh fields

and pastures ever new" for those who preferred the independence, tranquillity, and ease, of comparative solitude. All went well until sad abuses crept into the system of convict management. Convicts were permitted the unrestricted purchase of intoxicating liquors even from the very Government officials! A train of mischiefs followed, so that at length the colonists, greatly increased in settled communities, in wealth, social refinement, and respectability, loudly protested against a continuance of the then system of transportation, as threatening their utter ruin. Their complaints were listened to; the system, instead of being improved, was abolished; and the evils of which the colonists complained were transferred to the homecountry. But experience has shown that transportation is best suited to those colonies which are in a state of comparative infancy. Along the west, and particularly the northern coast of Australia, there are vast tracts suitable for the purpose; and in some quarters convict labour would be thankfully received. It is some such improved system of transportation which is now advocated, as a measure beneficial both to the home country and to the colonies.

ANCIENT CITY WELLS.

No city in the empire is supplied with better water for every domestic purpose than Aberdeen. It was not, however, until after the lapse of many centuries, the adoption of various imperfect expedients, and a world of local contention, that our citizens bethought themselves of applying to the river Dee, as the source of a never-failing supply of an element indispensable to their health and comfort. Availing myself of some curious particulars, kindly communicated by an antiquarian friend (W. D.*), I have thought it may not be deemed uninteresting to give a history of some of the earlier projects for furnishing the city with one of the prime necessaries of life.

In ancient times the wants of the community, in the respect referred to, appear to have been supplied either from draw-wells, or from the various burns which traversed the town, the waters of which then flowed in all their primitive purity.

can.

* The sagacious, witty, kind, true-hearted William DunNext to the last literary work Mr. Ramsay finished was that memorial notice of his friend, W. D., inserted in an earlier part of this volume. Mr. Ramsay's last writing was a short memoir of another friend, very dear to the Editor.