thus describes different visits which he paid to this school, contrasting the condition in which he found the school on his latter visits, with its previous state. The extract is taken from his -

"I find it perplexing to reckon how many years have passed since I traversed these byways one night before they were laid bare, to find out the first .

"I found my first , in an obscure place called , , pitifully struggling for life, under every disadvantage. It had no means-it had no suitable rooms-it derived no power or protection from being recognised by any authority; it attracted within its wretched walls a fluctuating swarm of faces-young in years but youthful in nothing else-that scowled Hope out of countenance. It was held in a low-roofed den, in a sickening atmosphere, in the midst of taint, and dirt, and pestilence; with all the deadly sins let loose, howling and shrieking at the doors. Zeal did not supply the place of method and training; the teachers knew little of their office; the pupils, with an evil sharpness, found them out, got the better of them, derided them, made blasphemous answers to scriptural questions, sang, fought, danced, robbed each other-seemed possessed by legions of devils. The place was stormed and carried, over and over again; the lights were blown out, the books strewn in the gutters, and the female scholars carried off triumphantly to their old wickedness. With no strength in it but its purpose, the school stood it all out, and made its way.

" Some two years since, I found it, one of many such, in a large convenient loft in this transition part of Farringdon- E 2

"I found the school in the same place, still advancing. It was now an , too; and besides the men and boys who were learning-some, aptly enough; some, with painful difficulty; some, sluggishly and wearily; some, not at all-to read and write and cipher; there were 2 groups, one of shoemakers, and one (in a gallery) of tailors, working with great industry and satisfaction. Each was taught and superintended by a regular workman engaged for the purpose, who delivered out the necessary means and implements. All were employed in mending, either their own dilapidated clothes or shoes, or the dilapidated clothes or shoes of some of the other pupils. They were of all ages, from young boys to old men. They were quiet, and intent upon their work. Some of them were almost as unused to it, as I should have shown myself to be if I had tried my hand, but all were deeply interested and profoundly anxious to do it somehow or other. They presented a very remarkable instance of the general desire there is, after all, even in the vagabond breast, to know something useful. One man, when he had mended his own scrap of a coat, drew it on with such an air of satisfaction, and put himself to so much inconvenience to look at the elbow he had darned, that I thought a new coat (and the mind could not imagine a period when that coat of his was new !) would not have pleased him better. In the other part of the school, where each class was partitioned off by screens adjusted like the boxes in a coffee-room, was some very good writing, and some singing of the multiplication table -the latter on a principle much too juvenile and inno- cent for some of the singers. There was also a ciphering- class, where a young pupil-teacher had written a legible sum in compound addition, on a broken slate, and was walking

"The best and most spirited teacher was a young man, himself reclaimed through the agency of this school from the lowest depths of misery and debasement, whom the Committee were about to send out to . He appeared quite to deserve the interest they took in him, and his appearance and manner were a strong testimony to the merits of the establishment.

" I had scarcely made the round, when a moving of feet overhead announced that the school was breaking up for the night. It was succeeded by profound silence, and then by a hymn, sung in a subdued tone, and in very good time and tune, by the learners we had lately seen. Separated from their miserable bodies, the effect of their voices, united in this strain, was infinitely solemn. It was as if their souls were singing-as if the outward differences that parted us had fallen away, and the time was come when all the per- verted good that was in them, or that ever might have been in them, arose imploringly to heaven. ...

" I do not hesitate to say-why should I, for I know it to be true ?-that an annual sum of money, contemptible in amount as compared with any charges upon any list, freely granted in behalf of these schools, and shackled with no preposterous red-tape conditions, would relieve the prisons, diminish county rates, clear loads of shame and guilt out of the streets, recruit the army and navy, waft to new countries fleets full of useful labour, for which their inhabitants would be thankful and beholden to us. It is no depreciation of the devoted people whom I found presiding here, to add, that with such assistance as a trained knowledge of the business of instruction, and a sound system adjusted to the peculiar difficulties and conditions of this sphere of action, their usefulness could be increased fifty-fold in a few months."