appreciated in the proper quarter. These remarks
were forcibly suggested to me on the present
occasion, when I had a good opportunity of
being assured that the Prince of Wales is a
sensible, hearty, unaffected young man, whose
genial nature and good taste do not require him
to condescend to anything that becomes a
rational being and an English gentleman.

The Exhibition was an International one;
indeed, it might be said that it contained specimens
of the reformatory art and industry of all
nations. There were, in addition to those of
London and the English provinces, contributions
from France, Belgium, Prussia, Austria, Portugal,
Hanover, Italy, Dresden, Saxony, Malta,
Egypt, and America. Few, perhaps, had any
idea that the reformatory movement had
penetrated to some of the countries here mentioned.
Egypt, for example. Who would have thought
that Cairo had a ragged school, where Moslem
girls are taught to do embroidery and read the
Bible! A curious difficulty besets the efforts of
the patrons of this Egyptian school. The girls
are most irregular in their attendance, being
often taken away when mere children to be
married.

The trophy which stood at the main entrance
of this Exhibition may be said to have been the
key to the general nature of its contents. In
the great International unreformed Exhibition
of 1862, the trophy which challenged attention
on entrance was a pyramid, representing
the bulk of all the gold dug up in Australia.
Here, it was a pyramid composed of halfpenny
bundles of firewood, chopped and tied up by the
boys in a reformatory. The art and industry
generally were of this humble order, manifesting
themselves most commonly in brushes, mats,
clothes-pegs, baskets, woollen socks,and blacking;
soaring upwards, here and there, to mahogany
cabinet work, patent leather boots, and gentlemen's
dress suits. The British reformatories
had sent not only specimens of their manufactures,
but also specimens of the manufacturers.
Along the outer sides of the great hall, boys
from various reformatories were conducting the
ordinary occupations of their workshops; making
mats, chopping firewood, printing bills, &c.
You would scarcely think that there was much
art in chopping firewood, or that the operation
was in any degree an interesting one. Yet I
found myself more fascinated, so to speak, by
the wood-chopping, than by any other process I
witnessed. It is one of the things in the list with
driving a gig and writing a leading article, that
we all think we can do. But after witnessing
the magical chopper performance of these boys,
I am ready to confess that I could not earn
my salt at wood-chopping. It is almost as
wonderful as Colonel (I wish he wasn't a colonel, but
I don't quite know why) Stodare's basket trick.
The colonel stabs a basket through and through
with a sword, without hurting the well-grown
young lady inside it; and these boys bring
down a chopper with steam power rapidity upon
three or four slices of wood without chopping
their fingers. Every time, the chopper misses
the forefinger and thumb by a hair's breadth,
and the little sticks fall on either side like rain.
The domestic maxim, that you should not trust
children with edged tools, is laughed to scorn.
Yes, there is art even in chopping.

Here are four-and-twenty little tailors all
of a row, sitting cross-legged on a bench,
stitching away at coats, and waistcoats, and
trousers—such very little mites of tailors that
it would require a thorough acquaintance with
decimal fractions to say how many of them
would be required to make a man. Below them
are ranged a row of little shoemakers, with little
lapstones on their little knees, and little awls
in their little hands, making full-grown boots—
Lilliput cobbling for Brobdingnag, Hop-o'my-
Thumb making seven-leagued boots for
Goribuster. And then we come upon lads of ten
or twelve years making bristles to grow out of
bald pieces of wood, and giving them complete
heads of hair with a rapidity that might well
excite the envy of the proprietor of the "patent
regenerator." Boys conjuring with loose pieces
of oakum, and magically producing mats
interwoven with permanent injunctions to "Wipe
your Feet," and "Beware of the Dog," the latter
in what might be called dog Latin; girls clear-
starching and ironing elaborately- stitched
shirt-fronts, the M.A. examination of laundry;
others making lace, twirling about countless
bobbins, all as like each other as peas, with as
much familiarity as if they were marked and
numbered; blind young women working the
sewing-machine, and, with their quickened
sense of touch, guiding the strips of leather or
cloth with the greatest accuracy and precision;
boys and girls folding and pasting paper bags,
others printing labels or bill-heads—on every
side busy hands finding some useful work to do,
and doing it earnestly and well.

Little pamphlets that are handed to me as I
pass along furnish some interesting particulars
of the results of reformatory work. Here is a
small slip of paper which informs me that when
all the homes in connexion with the London
Female Preventive and Reformatory Institution
are full, three thousand meals a week have to
be provided for the support of the inmates.
During the past seven years the Islington
Reformatory has admitted 186 boys, 46 of
whom are still under its care, and 115 are known
to be doing well. The London Female Preventive
and Reformatory Institution, in the Euston-
road, has, since 1857, admitted 1765 women
and girls. Of these, 863 were provided with
situations, 346 were restored to their friends,
70 were married, 12 emigrated, 5 died, 46 were
dismissed, and 381 left the homes, before the
expiration of their term, to seek employment.
As showing the destitute, friendless, and castaway
condition of these unfortunate creatures,
it is stated that only 636 of them had fathers
living; only 688 had mothers; 470 had neither
parents living, and 89 never knew or heard of
their parents. Some of the causes assigned
as leading to the fall of the inmates are stated
as follows: " Breach of promise of marriage,