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and teachers of the healthy fear them, and with reason; they, with their dirt, their sores, and their benighted ignorance, slink away from the healthy. Twenty years ago, Dr Tuckerman, who was the originator of domestic missions in America, and probably in our own country, pointed this out. The ragged school movement has commenced since that period, and on this subject no one is better qualified to give an opinion than Miss Carpenter, from her own valuable services at Bristol, and her devotion to the cause of the children for whom this was designed; but these also she shows to be insufficient, much as they have accomplished, for they have done and are doing much. They have thrown an arch of communication over the gulf that formerly separated the perishing and dangerous classes' from the other classes of the community, sown germs of good in many a heart; and thrown light on many an evil hitherto shrouded in darkness; but they cannot stem the flood of contamination from ignorant, vicious, and degraded parentage and companionship, denlike places of abode, crowded, filthy, airless, waterless, nor give support to the destitute, nor find employment for those branded with the name of felons. Even the free day-schools that have arisen out of the evening ragged schools can only meet the wants of certain of those classes, but are so valuable to them as to deserve the aid from the state which as yet they have not received.

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Workhouse schools and prison schools, including the fine Government establishment at Parkhurst, in the Isle of Wight, have been unable to effect a real reformation. Experience shows that whatever outward decorum may be induced whilst the inmates are under discipline, a lapse into crime is the nearly invariable result of liberty. FEAR is a principle that will never succeed in education. In vain is it resorted to. Failure again and again will be the result, till it is superseded by its opposite, LOVE; not a weak indulgence, but a holy, religious principle, exerted constantly for the highest good of the children. For these outcasts especially, whose wretched circumstances have driven them into a totally unnatural position of independence, it is found above all important, to adopt a system as nearly resembling the discipline of a well-ordered family as possible, so as to awaken in them that faith and obedience which are the natural characteristics of childhood. Accordingly the greatest success has attended those establishments which most closely adhere to this form. Such are the Rauhe Haus, near Hamburg, founded in 1833, which has served as a model to most of those existing in Germany; and the Swiss Rural Schools, erected on the plans of Werhli, who has inherited the spirit and views of Fellenberg and Pestalozzi, the great leader in this work of love, and who

died believing he had failed in it. If his spirit now watches over the 'moral orphans' of his country, whom in his life he so cherished, how must it rejoice! Most interesting descriptions of these schools, and of the Rauhe Haus, are given by Miss Carpenter. At the latter, the pupils are divided into families of twelve, each twelve having a separate thatched cottage to itself. It began with one family, assisted by the energy and benevolence of a few individuals; it now contains more than 150 children, girls as well as boys. These schools are extending over Prussia, Bavaria, Baden, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, and even Russia, with more or less government aid and sanction. In France there are no less than 434 such establishments; that of Mettrai being the original and type of them all. In America they have been established on a large scale by acts of the Legislature, in Boston, New York, Philadelphia and Baltimore. A deputation from the Governor of Canada visited the principal cities of the United States to inspect these schools in 1848, and gave important testimony to their success, by recommending to their own Legislature the immediate erection of one or more houses of refuge in Canada.

In our own country all the efforts made in this cause have been by individual benevolence, but most encouraging success has attended them. We may mention, as examples, the philanthropic farm school at Red Hill near Reigate, that at Stretton on Dunsmoor near Warwick; an experiment in London on adult thieves, and the plans adopted at Aberdeen, of which Sheriff Watson was the originator, by which juvenile vagrancy has been entirely extinguished in that county. But the principles on which they were founded were completely recognised in the report of the Select Committee of the House of Lords, appointed to inquire into the execution of the Criminal Law. The question also received incidental consideration in the Select Committee on Prison Discipline in the House of Commons in 1850. It was searchingly investigated at Birmingham in the Conference on Preventive and Reformatory Schools in the past year.

The committee of the Conference has, however, been relieved from the necessity of taking any steps to bring their report before Government, by the appointment of a committee of inquiry towards the close of last Session, into the condition of 'Criminal and Destitute Juveniles.' This committee is still sitting, and in addition, a measure is looked for on the subject from the Earl of Shaftesbury, than whom no legislator is better fitted, by earnest benevolence and long services in the cause of the oppressed and miserable, to carry it through.

If there remain on any minds, after such a survey of the sub

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ject as this brief analysis of the comprehensive work before us can afford, objections to the movement in behalf of these perishing and dangerous classes, such as we occasionally hear on the score of expense, and of the encouragement it would afford to guilty parents to neglect their children, we must refer them to the work itself for answer, offering only the following suggestions. The expense of prevention would probably be infinitely less than the cost of the present unsuccessful efforts at cure; and whatever course is adopted, the community cannot escape the charge. In prison and out of prison they have to maintain their criminal population now. As to the guilty parents, they are too ignorant and miserable, the victims as well as the scourges of society, and such measures as have been here advocated would force them to maintain their children, if possible, now they get rid of all charge for them every time the prison receives them.

We conclude in a spirit of earnest sympathy with the labourer in this neglected vineyard. Three experimental institutions have been commenced, we are informed, during the course of the past year; and it is known,' says Miss Carpenter, 'that the due support and success of these will lead to the establishment of others.' We feel entire faith that the seed thus sown amid thorns and brambles, by hands that have worked on ungrudgingly and without fainting, will in due time bear fruit, under the blessing of the Lord of the harvest.

THE LAIRD OF ALLENDERS.*

HARRY MUIR, the hero of this story of Scottish life, is a Glasgow clerk; born, however, as it turns out, to the inheritance of a slender lairdship. But whether as the disguised manipulator of bills of lading, or the flushed and fevered owner of a small estate, the drift of the narrative is to show the irresolute, squeezable, boneless 'lad that couldna tak' care o' himsel'. By early initiation in the ways of the bottle, either in the after-dinner carousals of patronising friends, or in the more jovial and uproarious gatherings of tap and tavern, likings were awakened and confirmed which domineered through life. So that Harry Muir, clerk, and Laird of Allenders, caught in the fangs of custom, is squeezed into habits that bring his brief and dissipated career to an untimely end.

This office appurtenance of George Buchanan & Sons is introduced as already married. With sixty pounds a-year, he has not

*Harry Muir. A Story of Scottish Life. By the author of 'Passages in the Life of Mrs Margaret Maitland,'Merkland,' 'Adam Graeme,' etc. London: Hurst and Blackett. 1853.

only a wife and baby, but has an elder strong-willed sister, with two younger ones, under his roof. These latter, however, are no encumbrance. The kind of work obtained by female hands in such a city as Glasgow makes it a matter comparatively easy for any number of sisters, cousins, aunts, nieces, or daughters in single blessedness to support themselves: and not only themselves, but in the case of that not uncommon parasite, a toping male relative, frequently to bear him up in his sinking downward career of habitual dissipation. Harry is young, clever, agreeable, witty, and kindly social. He is the pride of his home, but the growing fountain of its disquietude. The junior Buchanans relish the society of their more brilliant-minded vassal, and, as a consequence, secure his convivial capabilities as often as pleasure or necessity requires. He is not only up to the ledger and the mysteries of cent per cent, but is a capital joker, laugher, talker, story-teller, singer-in short, the very soul of an evening party. And so, for the sake of his warm cephalic outpourings, he is privileged to sip the delusive demon that steals away his brain.

A lawyer cousin of the younger Buchanans, Cuthbert Charteris, from Edinburgh, visits his Glasgow friend, and is introduced to Muir as the ledger packhorse and the after-dinner toping Jim Crow. Having dined at the family residence, George Square, on their way in the evening to the theatre, Harry, in attempting to save a child from the plunging or kicking of a horse, is himself struck, and has one of his limbs fractured. Homeward he is borne to his little wife and baby, his tall grim sister, Martha, and the younger ones, Violet and Rose. This lays the foundation for the lawyer's ultimately tracing Muir's relationship as heir-at-law to the estate of Allenders, situated on the banks of the Forth near to Stirling. But ere that link in the fortunes of the unfledged laird is reached, his progress in the bottle infatuation leads to his removal from the employment of George Buchanan & Sons.

This consequence to Muir is natural enough. Those physical peculiarities, whatever they are, which, in a certain proportion of human creatures environed with the drinking usages, lead inevitably to the vice of intemperance, were present in the witty, facile, highly emotional Muir. He hates the degradation implied in being merely a lackey. He feels that he knows more, thinks more, utters himself more fluently, and gathers the fire of conversation more quickly than his commercial lords. Yet the temptation of convivial flattery comes, and notwithstanding his 'firm resolve' to the contrary, again and again he succumbs. The flattery that ministers adulation at last dwindles into contempt, purse-proud contempt galls the jaded spirit of exhausted inebriation, and mutual variance, conflict, and repulsion at length ensue.

Harry Muir is no longer the office utensil and after-dinner droll of the impinioned heirs of the West India merchant. The issue is natural enough. But with the exception of results, we see little in the story of the real habits of the bibacious youths whose less porous clay withstood the liquor that mastered the feeble Muir. He falls as myriads fall; but a veil, felicitously or infelicitously, is thrown around the table of the convivial wealthy in their alcoholic potations. We are not admitted to witness the toasting customs, as the sparkling claret or the purple port careers the hospitable board. We are not permitted to witness the gathering warmth, the glistening eye, the loquacious tongue, the merry peal, as wit and fun and jovial kindness rule the hour. Martha, Rose, and Violet, together with a little wife, dread the evening hours as they would dread the approach of a midnight crisis. Their hearts are sad, and Harry's tipsy looks gave token of the evening's debauch. But we are not ushered into the vision of the real business of an after-dinner demonstration. The 'hip, hip, hurrah,' the song, the gathering energy of tongue, and brain, and boisterous mirth, the drivelling senility of enfeebled thought; all are shut out in so far as Muir's progress in the career of incipient or confirmed intemperance is here displayed.

Nor do we find the Scottish tavern, in its seductive influences, obtruded on our view. Yet Muir's advance in the Yet Muir's advance in the ways of jollification must have been not unfrequently through an evening's revel in such a region; not the low public-house, where all comers are welcome; not the brazen, gilded, dazzling 'gin-palace,' where tattered wretchedness tries to drown its care; but the smiling, reputable, handsome, somewhat retiring resort of middleclass votaries of bacchanalian orgies, or their allied retainers. We should like to have seen depicted, with the pencil of a Scott or a Cervantes, some of the lustrous scenes in which the youth of our great cities, especially of the clerking and upper rank gradation, seek relaxation, excitement, pleasure, after the tension of business hours has passed away; above all, such a gathering of youthful graduates in tavern accomplishments as found a Harry Muir the soul of fun and frolic. What an insight as to the social training of some whose best years are thus consumed in the frivolous, visionary, sensual waste of the very bloom of youth and manhood! what unhappy homes, and rendered so by tavern folly! what parental quakings for the dead hour of the night! what agonies, and tears, and consuming griefs, and all for sons, brothers, fathers, whose footsteps have been directed to the trim, glittering, seductive resort of boon companions! It was here especially that the hero of this story of Scottish life became habituated to tastes and cravings, which ultimately mastered every better feeling. It was thither he went, 'like a fool to the correc

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