Sarah Martin.

"Hail! heavenly piety, supremely fair!
Whose smiles can calm the horrors of despair,
Bid in each breast unusual transports flow,

And wipe the tears that stain the cheek of woe.
How blest the man who leaves each meaner scene,
Like thee, exalted, smiling and serene !
Whose rising soul pursues a nobler flight,
Whose bosom melts with more refined delight;
Whose thoughts, elate with transports all sublime,
Can soar at once beyond the views of time;
Till, loosed from earth, as angels unconfined,
He flies, aërial, on the darting wind;
Free as the keen-eyed eagle bears away,
And mounts the regions of eternal day."

OGILVIE.

Sarah Martin.

BORN 1791. DIED 1843.

THE formerly quiet fishing-town of Yarmouth is fast growing into a fashionable watering-place. Within a mile or two of it, visitors are taken to a dull little village, containing the ruins of a castle. A few years ago, the unpretending hamlet offered a yet more interesting object than this half-demolished relic of brick and stone-work. It was the home of Sarah Martin, a prison benefactress, scarcely second to Mrs. Fry in the boldness of her designs, or the success of her ministrations.

Left an orphan at a very early age, and entirely dependent upon a relative for support, it became speedily necessary that Sarah, born of humble parents, should, like them, gain her own livelihood. She was placed with a dressmaker for a few months, and, at the expiration of that time, commenced business for

herself, by going out to daily needlework in Yarmouth and its neighbourhood. The girl had been taught to read and write-acquisitions of incalculable benefit to her who was destined to employ all her endowments in the interest of her fellow-creatures.

Passing to and fro on her work, Sarah's thoughts were often drawn to the prison, situated on her road. She had heard something of the condition of the criminals confined there, and her imagination filled up the outline. Tales of cells below ground, where a ray of the blessed sunshine never penetrated, mingled in her mind with the thought of Sundays passed within those melancholy walls, Sundays utterly misused and worse than unsanctified, for there was no service then within the prison, nothing to remind the miserable and abandoned inmates that the holy day of rest and self-communion was come, to infuse strength into the tired and overwrought heart for the remainder of the week. The idea of sufferings she could not alleviate was ever present, and, after some years, the desire grew so strong to enter, and judge in person of the possibility of inducing a better state of things, that it could no longer be opposed. In the latter part of the year 1819, a woman was imprisoned in Yarmouth gaol, whose case filled the gentle mind of Sarah Martin with mingled horror and pity. It is interesting to hear from her the manner in which her wish was gratified. "Years ago," she says, "I began to experience a strong desire to obtain admission to the prisoners