"How strange to think that there have been men like ourselves, and
living in this beautiful and happy country, who I suppose had
feelings and affections like ourselves, who could yet do such
dreadful things."

"Yes," said I, in a didactic tone; "yet after all, even those days
were a great improvement on the days that had gone before them. Have
you not read of the Mediaeval period, and the ferocity of its
criminal laws; and how in those days men fairly seemed to have
enjoyed tormenting their fellow men?--nay, for the matter of that,
they made their God a tormentor and a jailer rather than anything
else."

"Yes," said Dick, "there are good books on that period also, some of
which I have read. But as to the great improvement of the nineteenth
century, I don't see it. After all, the Mediaeval folk acted after
their conscience, as your remark about their God (which is true)
shows, and they were ready to bear what they inflicted on others;
whereas the nineteenth century ones were hypocrites, and pretended to
be humane, and yet went on tormenting those whom they dared to treat
so by shutting them up in prison, for no reason at all, except that
they were what they themselves, the prison-masters, had forced them
to be. O, it's horrible to think of!"

"But perhaps," said I, "they did not know what the prisons were
like."

Dick seemed roused, and even angry. "More shame for them," said he,
"when you and I know it all these years afterwards. Look you,
neighbour, they couldn't fail to know what a disgrace a prison is to