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workshops of shoemakers, carpenters, tailors, harness-makers, and blacksmiths, we were taken into the large school-room, where, at certain hours, instruction is given of an elementary kind, including the inculcation of religious and moral precepts. The chapel adjoining is a neat, though plain structure, and suited for the Roman Catholic form of worship; all other sects being excluded from the establishment, in order, as it is alleged, to prevent discussion and the growth of antipathies among the inmates a poor apology, it will be considered, for limiting the charity to the members of one form of faith. In the infirmary, an airy suite of apartments, we found only a single patient. This department is under the management of three females; and, need I say, they are Sisters of Charity? The cleanliness, order, and tastefulness of this and other parts of the establishment charmed us, and, to mark our general approval, we purchased a variety of articles at the depôt.

During our perambulations over the grounds, we had occasion to see parties of the inmates at work in the fields. With a dress mostly of coarse linen, straw-hats, bare legs, and clumsy wooden shoes, they cut a miserable figure, and a more ill-looking set of swarthy boys and lads could scarcely be pictured. The dress of the contre-maîtres at the heads of their divisions was a little better, but also of linen; they appeared to exert a firm control over their gangs or families, and are, as I was informed, a respectable class of young men, who, by their training here, are well fitted for taking the command of similar establishments elsewhere. The number of inmates or prisoners in the colony at the time of my visit was one hundred and ninety.

To understand the principle of seclusion at Mettray, it must be recollected that there is a law in France which sweeps the country of juvenile offenders. Every boy or girl under sixteen years of age, convicted of a crime, is considered guilty without discernment, and if not claimed by parents, is retained in prison till twenty years of age. This partly accounts for the vast number of juvenile detenûs which I saw in various quarters; but there is another cause. Many children are abandoned' and thrown upon the public in a very heartless way, and being seized by gens-d'armes wherever they may wander, they help materially to fill asylums and prisons. I was informed that such abandonment of children is frequently a result of second marriages the man who marries a widow with children turning the whole into the streets. I do not remember having ever heard of any such barbarity in England, ill as step-children are sometimes treated. Mettray has received inmates, or colonists, as they are termed, from many of the principal prisons, where they have been selected from the mass for general good conduct, or other favourable circumstances, and also increased its numbers by taking boys abandoned by nurses or parents, or who are houseless and vagrant orphans.

The great object entertained by the founders and conductors of Mettray, is thoroughly to discipline and purify minds tainted with crime, or affected by unsettled habits; and, by instruction in different kinds of labour, strictly suitable for rural districts, put the unfortunate inmates in the way of earning an honest livelihood on dismissal. The question arises, Will the projectors succeed in their benevolent intentions? According to their own account, everything promises well for the institution. The boys are no doubt exposed to the most beneficial influences, and if anything can reclaim from incipient wickedness, this must do it. Still the formidable difficulty remains, of establishing the reclaimed youths in respectable situations throughout the country after leaving the colony. As the number is not great, this may be accomplished by dint of friendly interposition; but that an annual dispersion of some thousands could be effected-supposing France to be provided with such a colony in every departmentis, I fear, not among things possible, unless the army were employed as a regular means of consumption. On the score of relieving the prisons, government pays, I believe, 160 francs for each convict annually; and as the produce of the labour greatly aids the voluntary contributions, the financial part of the scheme is encouraging. How far a colony of such a mixed character could be made to answer in England, is doubtful. The boys of Mettray do not run away, which, to an Englishman, seems very incomprehensible. But there are powerful reasons for this apparent self-denial. Independently of French, and, indeed, continental boys generally, being a poor-spirited set of urchins, without that love of adventure which is a mainspring of juvenile delinquency in this country, and is, in fact, a mainspring of all our greatness as a nation, it would be almost impossible for a colonist to abscond undetected. Were he to attempt such a freak, a gendarme would pick him up at the first town in which he set his foot, and he would be sent to prison in disgrace. Besides, no money is given to the colonists; the overplus of certain gains being carried to their account in the savings' bank of the establishment.

On the whole, the impressions made on my mind from a visit to Mettray were of an agreeable kind, and I felt assured it was, morally speaking, prodigiously in advance of prisons of all sorts, and would not unlikely form a model for further and perhaps still more favourable experiments in juvenile reclamation.

It would have been easy for me to have extended the present tract to the compass of a volume; for the subject is one of the most important of the day, and admits of much varied illustration. Enough, however, has been said to prove the necessity for, and value of, Schools of Industry, both as regards the prevention of crime, and the reclaiming of the young from vicious habits.

W. C.

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EARLY four hundred years ago, there was, at a short distance from the city of Antwerp, a blacksmith's cottage. It was not much better than a hut--lowroofed, mud-walled, and consisting of only one room. It was situated a little aloof from the high road, in one of those solitary nooks which are so often found, when least suspected, in the neighbourhood of large cities. Only at times there came through the distance the faint hum of a populous town, and the high spires of the renowned cathedral stood out in bold relief against the sky, which was of that pale bluish gray peculiar to an October evening, when the brilliant autumn sunsets are in some degree gone by.

The blacksmith's wife sat spinning by the half-open door of her humble dwelling. She was a woman of middle age; her face was of that peculiar Flemish cast which the Dutch painters have made so well known-round, fair, and rosy, with sleepy eyes of pale blue, bearing an expression of quiet content, almost amounting to apathy. A few locks of silky flaxen hair peeped from under her Flemish cap, and were smoothly laid over a rather high forehead, where, as yet, no wrinkle had intruded. She looked like one on whom the ills of life would fall lightly;

No. 126.

who would go on in her own quiet way, only seen by the unobtrusive acts of goodness which she did to others. Such characters are lightly esteemed, and little praised, yet what would the world be without them?

The good Flemish dame sat at her work undisturbed, occasionally stopping to listen for the noise of her husband's forge, which resounded from the high road, a little way off, where the blacksmith had wisely placed it, as well to deaden the noise of the hammering in his little cottage, as to attract stray customers. At this distance the unceasing sound of the forge was rather lulling and pleasant than otherwise, and no doubt the wife often thought so, as it reached her ears, and told her of the unwearied diligence with which her husband toiled for her and her children. Their cottage had once been alive with many childish voices, but one by one all had dropped off, from sudden disease or inherent delicacy of constitution. Of eight, seven lay in the churchyard not far distant, and one only was left to cheer the blacksmith's cottage-little Quintin, the youngest born. No wonder was it, therefore, that the mother often turned her eyes within, where the child was amusing himself; and at such times the placid, almost dull expression of her face changed into a look of ineffable love, for he was her youngest and her only one.

At last the sound of the forge ceased. ~ The blacksmith's wife immediately put by her distaff, and set about preparing the evening meal; for she knew her husband's daily work was over, and that he would soon be home. The sour kraut and the beer were laid on the rudely-carved plank, which, fitted on tressels, served for a table; and all was ready when the husband and father entered. He was a short, stout-built man; his broad face shone with good-nature, and his muscular frame showed strength which had not even begun to fail, though some gray locks mingled imperceptibly with his light curly hair. He nodded his head in cheerful thanks when his active wife brought him a large bowl of clear water, in which he washed his dusky face and hands; and then, without wasting words, sat down, like a hungry man as he was, to his meal. The wife, with a quiet smile, watched the eatables and drinkables disappear, interrupting him only to fill his plate or cup in silence, as a good wife ought; asking no questions until the first cravings of nature were satisfied.

When the blacksmith had finished his meal, he rested his brawny arms on the table, and looked in his wife's face-then for the first time broke silence. "I have had a long day's work, Gretchen; but that is not a bad thing for us, you know. I have shod all the elector's horses. He was travelling, and said none could do it so well as Matsys the blacksmith.”

"It is a good thing to be spoken well of; but great people do not often notice such folks as we are," answered the quiet Gretchen.

"The elector need not be ashamed of speaking of or to an

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honest man, who owes nothing to any one, and whose forge is never seen idle," said the blacksmith, who was an independent character in his way, though rather phlegmatic, like the rest of his countrymen. "But, by the by, working all day in the heat of that same forge makes one feel cold even here," continued he, shivering, and glancing towards the half-open door.

Gretchen rose up and closed it without saying a word. "You are a good wife, Gretchen," said the blacksmith, looking

at her affectionately: "you always think of your husband." A pleased smile passed over Gretchen's face. "You know, Hans, it is near the end of October; we must begin to have larger fires, I think.”

"And, thank God, we shall be able to have them, and also warm clothes; for I shall have plenty of work all winter. We will have a merry Christmas dinner, wife, and Quintin shall dance and sing, and have many nice things. But where is little Quintin?" asked the blacksmith, turning round.

"Here, father!" answered a sweet child's voice; and a little boy crept from out of a dark corner beside the hearth, where he had remained crouched while Matsys was eating his supper. He was slight, and rather delicate-looking, and dressed in the quaint Dutch fashion, which made him appear much older than he really was; and the uncommon intelligence of his countenance did not belie that impression. "I am here, father; do you want little Quintin?" said the child, lifting up the long dark lashes from his deep, violet-coloured, and beautiful eyes, which indeed formed the principal charm of a face not otherwise pretty.

"I want to know what you have been doing all day," said Matsys, drawing his son on his knee, and kissing him affectionately. The boy returned his father's rough but loving embrace, and then jumped off his knee, saying, "Wait a little, father, and I will show you."

He ran to a far corner of the room; the mother looked after him, saying, "Quintin often alarms me: he is always getting near the fire, and working and hammering. When I scold him, he only says that he is doing like his father."

The blacksmith burst into a loud cheerful laugh, that rung through the little cottage, in the midst of which Quintin appeared, bringing with him two armlets, as he called them, ingeniously worked in iron. The father took one of them from his son's tiny wrist, and put it on his own great thumb, laughing more than ever. "How did you make this clever little article?"

asked he.

"Pray do not be angry, father," timidly answered the child; "but I found an old horse-shoe in the forge, and brought it home; and then I made it red-hot, and hammered it into shape with the poker."

"And how did you contrive to make this pretty little hand that fastens the bracelet?"

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