this great city may be prevented by the simple
process or educating children for whom no one
cares, by helping the helpless, and by smoothing
some of the difficulties which beset those
who are at once young, friendless, and poor.
They emulate, in fact, the "Children's Aid
Society" of New York, mentioned in a recent
number of this journal;* and on a scale which
is limited only by the funds at their disposal.
That the Admiralty should have refused to find
a spar towards rigging up the hulk they lent,
and that the entire cost of fitting up the
Chichester—amounting to some three thousand
pounds—should have fallen upon the society,
is, of course, strictly in accordance with the
traditions of that wonderful department. The
bars of iron pointed out as "Seely's pigs," and
now lying in the hold for ballast, instead of
paving the dockyards—the use to which they
had been applied previously—make one speculate
upon the amount of good to be effected if
the money, amounting to millions, proved to be
now wasted in "re-construction" and in other
expensive conceits and ignorances of "My
Lords," were as usefully applied.

* See THE DEVIL'S TRAINING SCHOOL vol. xvii.,
p. 400.

Some years since, the Refuges, of which the
Chichester is a branch, had considerable aid
from the Privy Council—half the salaries of the
master, one-third the cost of the materials used
in the industrial schools, and a capitation grant
of five shillings a year for each boy having been
paid. All these privileges have been withdrawn,
and the good work depends solely upon the
liberality of the charitable. State help and State
sanction are limited to lending a ship's hulk, and
the Admiralty declines to even avail itself of the
services of the boys when trained, unless they
are able to produce the register of their birth—
a sheer impossibility in the majority of the
cases—an impossibility, indeed, which had a
great share in bringing this floating reformatory
into existence. The merchant service presents,
however, an ample and remunerative field. The
demand there for trained lads far exceeds the
supply, and there is no fear of the young
"Chichesters" remaining on hand.

If, then, the money annually given by good
impulsive people to child-beggars were
devoted to their permanent reclamation, the
benefit conferred on the community would be
simply incalculable. For it must be remembered
that even when Refuges, Home, and
training-ship are filled, they have subtracted
mere drops from the ocean of juvenile vice,
depravity, and helplessness supplied by London
alone. These are successful experiments; but
they are experiments only, and have been
stopped half way for lack of means. Is it very
unreasonable to ask, in these days of parliamentary
commissions' inquiries and reports, that
some authoritative investigation shall be made
into the feasibility of converting felons in
embryo into useful members of society, and
that the devil's training-school shall be
deprived of its pupils, to the general benefit of
the community, and the gradual emptying of
our jails?

AN INVOCATION.

I.

COME forth from the valley, come forth from the
     hill,
Come forth from the workshop, the mine, and the
     mill,
From pleasure or slumber, from study or play,
Come forth in your myriads to aid us to-day:
There's a word to be spoken, a deed to be done,
A truth to be utter'd, a cause to be won.
Come forth in your myriads! come forth, everyone!

II.

Come, youths, in your vigour; come, men, in your
     prime;
Come, age, with experience fresh gather'd from
     time;
Come, workers! you're welcome; come, thinkers,
     you must!
Come thick as the clouds of the midsummer dust,
Or the waves of the sea gleaming bright in the sun!
There's a truth to be told, and a cause to be won—
Come forth in your myriads, come forth every one!

WILD LIFE.

IT is to the spirit of adventure that England
is, in a great measure, indebted for her greatness.
Ardent and eager-minded men are
always ready to start on the most perilous
enterprise at the risk of life and of everything
else that is dear to them. Whether the object
be the discovery of a passage at the North Pole,
or of the sources of the Nile, of the mysteries
of Mecca, of the unknown tracks in the interior
of Africa, or of the remains of Nineveh—a
Franklin, a Baker, a Burton, a Livingstone,
a Layard, are at hand to start, backed by some
geographical or other society, and the result to
science, history, and geography has been great.
Other men, either by accident or from personal
enterprise, have done good service in the same
cause without any claim to national reward.
The adventures of a Robinson Crusoe are
of universal interest, and it is in this latter
category that we must place the recital by
E. H. Lamont of his personal adventures
in the South Pacific Islands, or Polynesia.
The story is a romance of real life, graphically
told. Shipwrecked and a prisoner, Lamont
gradually becomes a friend and chieftain of the
natives. Seeing little chance of escape, he
follows the old maxim, "Do at Rome as the
Romans do." He marries various young ladies,
not to offend their mammas and papas, who, if
he had declined, would probably have speared
him and served him up to the disconsolate and
discarded females, fried or stewed, according to
their peculiar taste. He refuses the companionship
of a queen, which greatly annoys her
royal husband, who takes it as an insult.
Hospitality in the South Pacific Islands is
carried to an extreme. At Utah, an hypocritical
veil of sanctity is thrown over the immoral life