decidedly the less at ease of the two. The
gaoler himself is moved to compassion at the
ceremony of private whipping.

Education is the great hope. Education is
the beginning of all the good in man. Let us
see how much of this good is obtainable by
juvenile offenders. We must not fall into the
error of calling "reading and writing" education;
nevertheless due importance must be
attached to these acts as the instruments of
modern culture. Note, first, that we are
embarrassed by the circumstance, that the
young thieves, on entering the prisons,
frequently conceal their knowledge. Mr.
Pearson has recorded this fact, and has
given it as his opinion, that "the cause of
juvenile crime is not the absence of education;"
further, he thinks, "that any education of
the children of the labouring classes that is
not accompanied with industrial training, and
their actual employment in manual and useful
labour, will entirely fail in checking the growth
of crime." Mr. Pearson's meaning seems
obvious enough; the truth is, that the
"industrial training" would be "education" in
the proper sense of the word. Fragments of
book knowledge may be stuck on—if we may
use the expression—to any reprobate of moderate
acuteness; such acquisitions would be
like jewels on a savage. But what sense is
there in simply teaching a poor boy a few
things of a literary character, and then turning
him adrift to his old circumstances and
temptations? All good education begins with
a moral impulse; and, if a person cannot see
the immense moral influence of industry on a
character, he can do little good in this inquiry.
"I call it," says Mr. Clay, the chaplain of the
Preston House of Correction, "extreme
ignorance, when a man, or woman, or child, cannot
repeat a word of prayer—when they cannot
do it intelligibly. They attempt sometimes to
repeat the Lord's Prayer, but they make
gibberish of it. I call it extreme ignorance when
they cannot name the reigning Sovereign, or
the months of the year. I have found a great
number that did not know the months of the
year; and when I have put the question to
them in the plainest way I can, 'Do you know
who is reigning over us?' the answer has
been 'No'.—'Do not you know the name of
the Queen?' 'Prince Albert, is it not?' I have
conversed with one thousand three hundred
and one men and boys, and two hundred and
eighty-seven women and girls, out of about
three thousand, in this state of ignorance. I
have found one thousand two hundred and
ninety men and boys, and two hundred and
ninety-three women and girls, so incapable of
receiving moral or religious instruction, that
to speak to them of virtue, vice, iniquity, or
holiness, was to speak to them in an unknown
tongue. They have a vague impression of the
immortality of the soul; and, that when they
leave this world for another, they will be
rewarded or punished, but they know little or
nothing of the conditions of the reward or
punishment. As respects mere ignorance, I
cannot say that I have known many instances
of persons who did not believe in the existence
of a God at all, and that is the ground of our
hope, but they have no sense of a God
constantly present and superintending them."
The cases of extreme ignorance among the
juvenile and adult prisoners, amount to from
forty-three to forty-five per cent.

A significant fact as to the value of mere
reading and writing, is furnished by Mr.
Smith, governor of Edinburgh gaol. The
number of re-commitments of those who can
read well, he says, is much greater than the
number of those who cannot read at all.

Few have not heard of Parkhurst prison,
in the Isle of Wight, built to receive juvenile
offenders sentenced to transportation, with
a view of reforming them before sending
them to people a new country. Parkhurst
contains accordingly the pick of the black
sheep—the pet black lambs of the nation.
Three qualifications are necessary to the
Parkhurst boy,—"he must be fourteen years
of age, four feet six inches high, and of
a character so depraved, that he would be
sentenced by the court to transportation, if
Parkhurst did not exist." It would seem,
from the returns, that most of the boys have
previously been to some school or other,
although the great majority are uneducated.
The schools they had attended, were Church
of England schools, private schools, Scotch and
other free schools, in the proportion of thirty-
five, twenty-five, and twenty-seven respectively.
Now, note the results we arrive at,
from examining the table. While twenty can
read tolerably,—twenty-four can repeat the
Church Catechism. While sixty have
"scarcely any or none"—knowledge of the
meaning of words in use, ALL can repeat the
Lord's Prayer. About one hundred and two
can repeat the Church Catechism, either well,
tolerably, or in small portions; while about
one hundred and sixty-two only have any
knowledge of the "meaning of words in use."
These little facts, recorded in tabular figures,
give one a glimpse of what the "schools"
—the Church of England and others do.
"Repeating" without "understanding," is,
it would seem, principally taught—a dull
system of mechanical grinding of words, little
more respectable than the rites of Mumbo-
Jumbo.

The present school system, Miss Carpenter
thinks, is useless to the classes of whom we
are speaking; and attention must next be
directed to the question, what schools can
be got up with any probability of success?
But, first, we should notice a suggestion
that, if Penal Reformatory Schools were
established, the parents of children should be
made responsible—should be even made to pay
for their maintenance, if they fell into crime
through their neglect. It is one of the curses
of the present state of things, that the parent
is not responsible; that he leaves his child to