in the purchase of saccharine or savoury
edibles, as is the custom of our English youth
to do. Secondly, each boy brought with him
a silver spoon and fork, and a holder for his
table-napkin, which, mirabile dictu, when he
left were returned to him! Thirdly, in the
whole of the Pension Gogo there were to be
found nor birch, nor cane, nor strap.

The school was managed entirely without
corporal punishment. In the three years we
were there, a few boxes on the ear may have
been administered in extreme cases; a few
pair of ears may have been pulled; and one
boy, we remember, who was extraordinarily
contumacious, was, by the Principal, solemnly,
though softly, kicked from the class-room.
But we had no daily—hourly—exhibitions of
torture; no boys writhing under a savage
cane; no counting the weals on your arms
when you went to bed, and declaring you
could bear thrashing better than So-and-so.
We don't know whether these things are
really "better managed in France;" but we
aver, that afterwards, when we were beaten
like a dog, at an English school, we preferred
the system of the Pension Gogo, where a
hundred and fifty boys were kept in order without
beating.

You are not to suppose that at the Pension
Gogo there were no punishments. There
were divers pains and penalties to which
recalcitrant boys were liable. Fines, bad
marks, impositions, deprivation of recreation,
were among these. For graver offences the
culprit knelt on a form, or in a corner, which
to us seemed ridiculous, and not salutary; for
the kneeling one generally employed himself
in making hideous grimaces at us, or at his
instructor, when that sage's back was turned.
The ultimo ratio regum, the peine forte et dure,
was incarceration in a grim apartment
contiguous to the wine-cellar, called the Cave,
where bread-and-water was the diet, solitude
the adjunct, and of which dreary legends of
spectres and rats were current. The punishment,
however, which we most dreaded was
the daily bulletin—Bulletin hebdomadaire.
This was a ceremony which took place every
Saturday afternoon, at dinner-time. The
Principal Gogo, just as we had finished our
soup, and were preparing for an onslaught
on the bouilli, would fortify himself with a
huge pinch of snuff, and read from a paper as
long and as ominous-looking as an inn-reckoning,
or a bill-of-costs, the register of our conduct,
our studies, our progress during the week.
When the good boys' names were mentioned,
with favourable comments on their rectitude
of conduct, they simpered over their meat, and
eat their victuals with blushing satisfaction.
But when it came to the turn of the idle, the
contumacious, the naughty boys, how they
writhed—how they groaned! Marginal
references as to their incorrigible disposition
were inscribed on the Bulletin. "Abominable,"
"execrable," " insupportable;" these
were chalked against their names, or
thundered at them by the indignant Gogo. The
Bulletin hebdomadaire spoilt many a boy's
dinner in our time; for that we can avouch.

AN ACCOUNT OF SOME TREATMENT
OF GOLD AND GEMS.

THOSE who visit the metal works of
Birmingham naturally desire to know where
the metals come from; and especially the
precious metals. Among the materials shown
to the visitor, are drawers full of the brightest
and cleanest gold; and ingots of silver, pure,
or slightly streaked with copper. We have
handled to-day an ingot which contains, to
ninety-two ounces ten pennyweights of silver,
seven ounces ten pennyweights of copper. We
ask whether the gold comes from California;
but we find that it has just arrived—from
a much nearer place—from a refinery next
door. We hear high praise of the Californian
gold. It is so pure that some of it can be
used, without refining, for second-rate articles.
Some small black specks may be detected in
it, certainly, though they are so few and so
minute, that the native gold is wrought in
large quantities. But what is this neighbouring
refinery? Whence does it obtain the
metals it refines? Let us go and see.

It is a strange murky place; a dismal
enclosure, with ugly sheds, and yards not more
agreeable to the eye. Its beauties come out by
degrees, as the understanding opens to
comprehend the affairs of the establishment. In the
sheds, are ranges of musty-looking furnaces;
some cold and gaping, others showing, through
crevices, red signs of fire within. There are
piles of blocks of coal, of burnt ladles and peels,
and rivulets of black refuse, which has flowed
out from the furnaces into safe beds of red
sand. In a special shed, is a black moist-
looking heap of what appears to be filth,
battened into the shape of a large compost
bed. A man is filling a barrow with this
commodity, and smoothing it down with loving
care. And well he may; for this
despicable-looking dirt is the California of the
concern! Here is their gold mine, and their
silver mine, and their copper mine. In another
shed, is a mill-stone on edge, revolving with the
post to which it is fixed, to crush the material
which is to be calcined. In the yard, we
see heaps of scoriae—the shining, heavy,
glassy-looking fragments, which tell tales of
the prodigious heat to which they have been
subjected. We see picks, and more ladles,
and lanterns, and a most sordid-looking
bonfire. A heap of refuse is burning on the
stones; old rags, fragments of shoes, cinders,
dust and nails—the veriest sweepings that
can be imagined. Something precious is there;
but the mass must be burned to become
manageable. The ashes will be swept up for
the refinery.

But what is it that yields gold, and silver,
and copper, and brass? What is that heap