quality, and the dinners, not to say of paupers, but of soldiers, sailors, labourers, the great bulk of the honest, working community; of whom not one man in five hundred ever dined half so well.

But I learned that the ‘system’ required high living; and, in short, to dispose of the system, once for all, I found that on that head and on all others, ‘the system’ put an end to all doubts, and disposed of all anomalies. Nobody appeared to have the least idea that there was any other system, but THE system, to be considered.

As we were going through some of the magnificent passages, I inquired of Mr. Creakle and his friends what were supposed to be the main advantages of this all-governing and universally over-riding system?

I found them to be the perfect isolation of prisoners —