The writer in the Standard points out the striking association of ignorance, stupidity, and physical debility in connexion with misery and want

"When received at the Central London School, disease and suffering are painfully depicted in every face. Often the skin is marred with smallpox, and the eyes disfigured by ophthalmia or scrofula, or the hair is cropped from scald head or ringworm; or the bones are bent, and the figure dwarfed from rickets; or great disfiguring scrofulous glands distort the face, or scar it with the rugged cicatrices of old abscesses. It is very difficult to estimate ages, they are so small, and yet look so old. It is said that a tenth of their number are constantly in hospital, and a considerable number have to be detained in the convalescent wards because they are too delicate to bear the rougher experience of school. As their health improves, the intellect brightens, and the better qualifications of mind come out. At first they are heavy, stubborn, and shy; it is impossible to teach them; they sit moping about, and have no more energy to play than they have to work. But even in a few weeks the feeding and care induce a marvellous change; they astonish with their energy, they play and work with zeal, and pass out into the struggle of life armed with the means of a certain independence of any future help."

The hospital records of this Central London School indicate that about half the children are admitted in a state of positive disease, and many others are set down as feeble, pale, and thin. The diseases are those of bad hygiene.

These illustrations of the condition of our poor and of the labouring classes, are taken from a heap almost at random; many of a most touching and distressing kind have been rejected in order to keep the references within a readable limit, as, for example, the Rev. Isaac Taylor's report of the state of the poor in his district of Bethnal Green, in which he tells us of the "children's trades," and of the way in which one little labourer—a girl of 4 years old-was found earning her own living by the manufacture of paper lucifer-match boxes, and of whom he says, "this poor little woman, as might be expected, is grave and sad beyond her years. She has none of a child's vivacity; she does not seem to know what play is; her whole thoughts are centred in the eternal round of lucifer-box making, in which her whole life is passed. She has never been beyond the dingy street in which she was born; she has never so much as seen a tree, or a daisy, or a blade of grass. And this is only one case out of scores and hundreds."

He says that so great is the mortality among the children in this locality that it is a common

thing for a mother to say that she has buried six or eight, and reared one or two.

What comparison the picture will bear to that of past times it is difficult to say, but whether better or worse, it is bad enough to make every individual in the land above the condition of a pauper or an idiot thoughtful, and anxious to know his own share of responsibility in its continuance.

Mean and pitiful must be the state of that man's mind who is not stimulated by the spectacle of so much human want and misery to exert himself for its diminution. Unpatriotic and insensible to shame must he be who does not blush to find that the country which is the pioneer of science, the disseminator of religion to the world, and so rich as to fling away its millions of gold in distant regions to support sentiments of prestige or chivalry, is so like a whited sepulchre-fair without, but within full of corruption and the wrecks of suffering and destruction.

Shall we be contented to go on multiplying workhouses and prisons, relieving officers and police, in fact all the expensive and unsatisfactory machinery of a palliative and repressive policy, or shall we look our duty in the face and go to the fount and origin of all these social evils? It is true there are other causes besides deficient

education and training that contribute to the results of pauperism and crime, such as the prevalent and increasing causes of preventable disease as chiefly exhibited in the miserable and unhealthy but expensive dwellings of the poor, with their shocking surroundings of putrifying filth. Happily public attention has been directed to these, and we may hope in time to see the refuse materials of dwellings better applied than in poisoning the two most essential sustainers of life-the air we breathe and the water we drink-and to find that our philanthropists succeed in getting rid of the disgraceful foci of disease-the wretched dens of our labouring classes-and in replacing them by homes suitable for human beings, compatible with health, and cheap enough to be within the limit of their earnings to pay for them; but the great fountain of human want and sorrow-the deficient training and education of the children of our people-remains to be effectively dealt with.

CHAPTER III.

The efforts of Society and the State to mitigate the evils of deficient education and training.

Educunt fætus, aut quum liquentia mella

Stipant et dulci distendunt nectare cellas."-ENEID.

We have now to consider what society and the State have done towards mitigating, and as far as possible removing, the dreadful state of things disclosed in the preceding chapter. We have seen how large a portion of the community is dragging on a wretched existence of animal life, in the condition of ignorance and poverty, decaying like rotten sheep, or degrading into monstrocities of savage or criminal life. We have learned that in the midst of this mass of morbid activity, is springing up constantly what should be the reinforcement of the country's strength and progress, the young and fresh minds and bodies that constitute, among the destitute classes, at