"London, 4th September, 1824."
What a magnificent scheme! How comprehensive and how vast! But nothing came of it, beyond the translation of his son, Robert Dale Owen, to this country,—a very clever, well-educated, and earnest, though rather awkward and sluggish young man, who has achieved a large reputation here, and will be yet more distinguished if he lives, being well grounded and rooted in the foundation principles of government, and both conscientious and fearless.
Old Bailey.—This and other like places, of which we have all read so much that we feel acquainted with them, not as pictures or descriptions, at second hand, but as decided and positive realities, I lost no time in seeing.
I found the court-room small, much smaller than the average with us, badly arranged, and worse lighted. A prisoner was up for burglary. He was a sullen, turbulent-looking fellow; and his counsel, an Old Bailey lawyer, was inquiring, with a pertinacity that astonished while it amused me, about the dirt in a comb. His object was to ascertain "whether it had been used or not"; and, as there were two sides to it, which side had become dirty from being carried in the pocket, and which from legitimate use. Before the prisoner was a toilet-glass, in which he could not help seeing his own pale, haggard, frightened face whenever he looked up,—a refinement of barbarism I was not prepared for in a British court of justice. I occupied a seat in the gallery, surrounded by professional pickpockets, burglars, and highwaymen, I dare say; for they talked freely of the poor fellow's chances, and like experts.
Joanna Baillie.—"Here," said Lady Bentham, wife of General Sir Samuel Bentham, the originator of that Panopticon, which was the germ of all our prison discipline as well as of all penitentiary improvements, the world over,—"Here is an autograph you will think worth having, I am sure, after what I have heard you say of the writer, and of her tragedies, and I want you to see her";—handing me, as she spoke, the following brief note, written upon a bit of coarse paper about six inches by four.
"If you are perfectly disengaged this evening, Agnes and I will have the pleasure of taking tea with you, if you give us leave.
"J. Baillie."
Now, if there was a woman in the world I wanted to see, or one that I most heartily reverenced, it was Joanna Baillie. Her "De Montfort" I had always looked upon as one of the greatest tragedies ever written,—equal to anything of Shakespeare's for strength of delineation, simplicity, and effect, however inferior it might be in the superfluities of genius, in the overcharging of character and passion, of which we find so much in Shakespeare; and, on the whole, not unlike that wonderful Danish drama, "Dyveke," or a part of "Wallenstein."