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11
my Brother's circular penitentiary houses, they might receive these
benefits, in every circumstance, without stirring from their cells. No
thronging, nor jostling, in the way between the scene of work and the scene
destined to devotion. No quarrelling, nor confederating, for plotting to
escape: nor yet any whisper or fetters to prevent it. The whole building
might receive (why should it not?) in proper form the properties of a
Chappel. The Minister, stationed in the central Lodge, shall be heard, and
if you please, without being so much as seen. If the Chappel of Saint
Stephen (that great sink of corruption, were we to believe so many of those
who should be best acquainted with it)x retains still its virtue, after being
applied for so many hundred years to purposes which, were they ever so
rigidly adhered to, are but political at best, I see not how the reforming
purposes of the penal discipline should profane the sacredotal character,
if conferred on penitentiary houses. For surely, since the fall of our first
Parents, in no one spot could ever so great a measure of innocence have
been found as in this, at least if that be innocence which is the result of
impotence. No whisperings, no laughings, no gossipings, no oglings here.
Religion on the seventh day, as labour on the six, would find for once an
assembly, whom no distractions would render unattentive to her voice.]
Should you be curious to learn before hand how far in point of
and convenience the circular form may suit this purpose, the
experiment may be performed without much trouble you need but bid the
Coachman stop at the (I forget the name of it it was once the Pantheon in
Clerkenwell) on your return from your Sessions House to Queens Square
Place I once was in that Rotundo the attractions it then presented (I
speak not of myself for my motive I do assure you was no other than a
pure and very transient curiosity) were allowed refreshments and as
some suspected other entertainment which how unfit so ever to be allowed
will be sure to be found so long as London is London, if not there yet
certainly to be found in not the less in some other place. Despoiled
of those allurements you know perhaps better than I do since presented
and I suppose still presents the flowers of sacred oratory culled in the
bye-paths
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