starvation and crime. Accordingly, the cost
falls upon the country; and we hear in one
case of eight thieves mulcting the public to
the amount of thirteen thousand pounds. On
the other hand, how much more economical is
good sense in the long run! A report of the
Glasgow Industrial Schools for 1849, assures
us, that the maintenance and instruction of
its poor children costs only four pounds per
annum; while a pauper costs thirteen pounds,
and a prisoner sixteen pounds seven shillings
and fourpence. One of the most expensive
articles going is a prisoner. One of the most
economical things possible is virtue and good
conduct.

We now pretty well see the bearings
of affairs. We are in a condition, it is to be
hoped, to look at a Ragged School with
considerable curiosity and interest. The Ragged
School teacher lands in some district—on the
whole rather like a navigator among new
islands—and hoists his flag before an
astonished population. Out the boys buzz, with
matted hair, piebald with mud, fluttering in
rags, capering in lively squalor before the
navigator. "What's your name?" "They call
me Billy;" "And yours?" "Dick." Billy and
Dick, no other names, more than a goat or a
dog has. Questions are asked, brief answers
given. "Mother dead, father a drunkard.
Sometimes go errands, sometimes starving;
lay under arches; picked a pocket; sent to
Giltspur-street Prison; bread and water, and
visited by chaplain; well flogged, and turned
out!" This is the brief history of many a
boy. Let us now glance at these Ragged
Schools, and see what they have done, "they
being the fruits of," as Miss Carpenter says,
"the only organised movement that has been
made in the present century, to carry education
to the lowest depths of society." The earliest
attempt was made in April 1844, at a meeting
held at the St. Giles's Ragged School. They
grew out of a very natural necessity. There
being a large portion of the poor boys of the
town so ragged and dirty, that they constituted
a distinct class. Sunday and Day Schools of
the humblest class were "too respectable,"
apparently for these youngsters, who had a
raggedness and dirtiness which defied classification,
and demanded an establishment of
their own. Schools were opened from time to
time for them; there was "no lack of pupils,"
the policeman had to keep the door even
against aspirants. The difficulties of the case
may be imagined; for the teachers proposed
to teach these wild boys the word of God.
There may be pedants in piety, as well as in
everything else; and we have no doubt that
any narrow way of teaching religious matters
to such a company as a Ragged School, must
only produce such shameful scenes as these.
Surely, to get hold of a set of wild cubs,
half starved and criminal, and to be at all
dogmatic in religious teaching, must be an
absurdity.

We have no doubt that where these schools
fail, it is owing to an error of this sort; some
poor pedant of a teacher, whose profession is
Christianity, as another man's profession may
be law, holds forth, on Judæa, Benjamin's Cup,
the Passage of the Red Sea, and Pontius Pilate,
before the heart or moral nature of the pupil
has been at all worked on. It is quite plain,
that to a wild boy this must all be incomprehensible,
incredible, and even ludicrous. Miss
Carpenter, thankful as she is in her grateful
hopeful way for the good Ragged Schools
have really done, declares emphatically that
they must be wisely and efficiently conducted.
It is satisfactory to know that an improvement
is visible generally in districts where
Ragged Schools are established. Nay, the
very gathering together of the boys to hear
something partaking of a higher nature than
the vile jargon of their neighbourhoods must
do some good. The last report of the Ragged
School Union states that there are in existence
ninety-five schools; the number of voluntary
teachers being one thousand three hundred
and ninety-two; of children, on week evenings,
five thousand three hundred and fifty-two;
on Sunday, ten thousand four hundred and
thirty-nine.

We now come to a new agency, that of Free
Day Schools—a class of schools which belong
to the same kind as the last, and appear to
have arisen from them. There are several
sorts of them, some merely Day Schools for
free instruction, some Industrial Feeding
Schools, some partaking of the character of
Refuges for the destitute and vicious. Miss
Carpenter gives an account of a very interesting
one established at Bristol—a town
apparently remarkable for the large number of
destitute children it contains. Some five
years ago, a few persons, "strongly moved by
pity" for these, determined to attempt a
Free School there. The out-look was not
very hopeful, "midnight brawls" were the
fashion of the "lower orders," and two policemen
had been killed as an example to despots
disposed to interfere. The one thing needful,
however,—a brave good man—for a teacher,
was found, and by the end of six months he
had brought one hundred boys and girls into
order and decorum. Work was gone at, here,
in a sensible way; washing apparatus, for
instance, provided—the place itself being
decently warmed and ventilated. In short,
the conditions under which the poor children
lived being ameliorated when they became
pupils, something could be made of them.
Does not poor Rousseau, who mused so much
on education, tell us, that if we want to reform,
we must alter the conditions under which the
sin we suffer from is committed?
"Fundamental principles of religion" were taught,
"sectarian theology avoided: "the business
of the school included "common branches of
useful knowledge," "instruction in some
industrial occupation," and "inculcation of
cleanly and orderly habits." One is not at
all surprised to learn that the "industrial