giving to those boys to whom the knowledge
will be valuable—boys who will soon be
emigrants—some practical experience in bricks and
mortar. Adjoining the dining-hall and school-
room (one large-windowed rural hall serves
both uses) is a neat and ample chapel in which
the resident chaplain, the Reverend Sydney
Turner, reads morning prayers, and officiates
on Sunday before a congregation of remarkably
attentive boys. The boys at Red Hill have
faith in their chaplain. They live under his
eye, and experience the kind spirit of religion
which dictates his daily care on their behalf.
They feel the genuineness of his admonitions,
and are, therefore, notably attentive in the
chapel.

There are corn fields, and fields containing
vegetables in so immature a state, that our
experience in agriculture declines to pronounce
what they may be. In such fields, boys are
hoeing. That is the work least agreeable to
the young labourers. Here is a hay field.
We have got over stiles, through hedges now
and then, and over ditches. There is no sign
of prison. It is all a simple farm scene; and
the farm, being upon a hill, has, spread about
it—under the eyes of the poor boys who have
too often been bred to vice over the gutter of
a miserable court—a wide rich woodland
prospect.

Here are the boys under the burning sun
extremely busy with their long forks tossing
up the hay. On this the hottest day, cut grass
may, I suppose, be dried in half-an-hour; but
I will not venture an opinion, lest I be laughed
at, even by this very little boy of ten years
old. He is a new comer, from prison in
Liverpool. He never made hay before.

"What did you make?"

"Nothin."

"What had you been doing?"

"Walking about the streets."

"Nothing else?"

"I went to school."

That is the old story, the school and the
street; the street getting the better of the
school; a great deal learned in the street;
a very little in the school.

The professor of haymaking has some
conversation with us, apart from his class,
concerning neighbour Bunter, whose hay had
been spoiling for want of hands, and who had
got it in by the help of half-a-dozen Red Hill
boys. He had wished he might have twenty
such to help him. Two other farmers in the
like perplexity had asked for hands. The
boys on such occasions feel proud of the trust
put in their good behaviour. "You must be
warned," some of the boys are told, "how
you behave at Farmer Mallow's; he is a kind-
hearted man, but he looks rough outside.
Take care you don't answer if he scolds, and
mind you are very obedient!" One or two
faces are lighted up with that shrewd look of
comprehension, which small boys get when
they are cast upon the world to prey upon
the weaknesses of human character.

It must not be supposed that every depraved
boy who has been in jail and thence
transferred to Red Hill, is transformed at
the same time into a pattern of obedience and
virtue. The truth is very different. In the
first place, the authorities at Red Hill have
not the advantage of applying their efforts to
a single class of offenders. It wants the aid of
other institutions with which it might divide
the work that must be done. One institution
might then take the class of offenders whose
stay at the Reformatory is upon compulsion;
another, might take those sent by their friends,
as to a school; another, those who come of
their own free will. One might take children,
and another might take youths.

In the first instance it was attempted at
Red Hill to part the boys into families;—to
adopt the home system of discipline that has
been so successful at Mettray. That plan failed
for want of Englishmen competent—at any
rate on the temptation of small salary—to
administer it. The several heads of houses fell
together by the ears. It was necessary to
return to the old system of official and sub-
official, and even then to make many changes.
It is very easy to imagine that, if the
experiment at Red Hill had been directed by
anything less genuine than the sense, earnestness,
and devotion of its present director, it
would have been, at its beginning, a complete
failure.

But, it has not failed. Four boys out of
five are rescued by it. The fifth very often
takes advantage of the unwalled grounds, and
unbarred windows, to escape. They who
escape, are almost invariably retaken. They
elude detection while they roam the country;
but, they come to London in the end, and
there they come into the glare of the bull's
eye. One boy who had escaped, was lost
sight of, about the country, for a year. Then
he thought he might venture upon London;
in London he was seized immediately. The
recovered boys are treated as their
characters require. The Society never dwells
upon the topic of its outraged dignity; the
object is to save as many boys as possible, and
if a boy can be saved he is forgiven and
restored to trust. In other cases, it is requisite
to use the power of carrying him before the
offended majesty of law. The one in five who
cannot be reformed at Red Hill, certainly
would not be improved for the purposes of
free life by prison discipline. He might make
a good prisoner, but be good for nothing else.
He is a lost man to society. The other four,
who would all be lost under the common
system of neglect, are usually sent out to
the colonies, where they obtain situations as
farm servants or in other capacities; and—
with the exception of a few who prove to
belong, after all, to the unredeemed fifth part,
—do well and live as honest men.

There has been some tree clearing, and
there is a long ditch and fence made by the
boys. Making a fence, though hard work,