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REFORMATORIES.

R. MELVILLE, who manages the Woodbury Hill Reformatory, Worcestershire, has written a capital report about it. He seems to us to have thoroughly seen into the nature of the boys he has to deal with. Here are some interesting extracts:—

"Untruthfulness is a very strong feature. It is often the chief home lesson, and, in the worst boys, a prevailing practice. The most wanton instance of lying occurred lately in the case of that boy released after nine months detention. He knew why he was sent away, and that he had nothing to apprehend. The head of the police of a certain town who knew of his committal to us, found him and questioned him as to his being at large. He told him that I had died lately, and being very ill before I died, I said I could not die happy if the boys were kept in the Reformatory -so I had sent for them and released them all and then died. Hence, quite as much as the mischief of making them fancy you have an interest in their criminal career, the mistake of asking them of their history. A boy will try to catch your idea and always shape his statement accordingly. I remember an eminent man visiting us and asking a very bad boy of his parentage, &c. The boy thought bad example and depraved life was the cue from the form and tone of the question, and drew a picture of domestic degradation very appalling but entirely imaginary. They understate their age on trial always. They know well enough that leniency may ensue— or the treadmill be escaped. The boy mentioned above as between eighteen and nineteen doubtless gave himself as fifteen. The following letter is as good an evidence bearing on this point, as also on the dislike of criminal parents to Reformatories, as I can adduce.

"The son of this woman, having run away, had arrived at her house, and was in lodgings procured by her, and visited by her daily, at the time she wrote as follows:

"Rev. Sir,

66

'Birmingham, Jen 13th.

I take the Libberty of adrising theus few Lines to you to now if you ave found the Boys and if you have to pleas not to punnish George as it afects is head if hee is put about the Least thing in the World the doctor told me that is head was so Bad that was not fit for to Be put about and if you ave pleas to let me now and i shold take it as a very Great faver of you.

"and Remane your Humbel Sirvent

"SARIAH TURNER."

Vanity is another marked feature. This shows itself in various ways --in dress and the like-but in nothing outward so much as their hair. Haircutting, though except in runaways it is never cut for disfigurement, is always a time for tears. This dislike of short hair does not arise from its relation to the gaol, or it were commendable, but from its supposed ugliness and its relation to the workhouse-but chiefly the first. Two big boys, detected in a design to run away, roared with grief at the cropping of their hair, though nothing else moved them, and one was of very large experience of life.

"Vanity co-operates with or stimulates untruthfulness in such results as these. In exaggerated accounts of their parents' income, &c.

"In like manner there is a love of being individualized, or distinguished, no matter for what. Boys will undertake anything if it involves a selection, and decline the very same thing if many are to join. Poverty is not disclaimed if it is remarkable for its extremity; dulness in school, failing health and strength become sources of pride if they only are excessive and prodigious. Hence, and because great people are supposed to consume a large quantity, the fondness for physic. Happily Epsom salts are an exception.

"Impatience under pain and fatigue is another characteristic especially in town boys.

"On January 5th, a fine bright frosty morning, four big boys came home from the labour field crying lustily and begging they might not be sent to dig. Next day two of these ran away. The school was vaccinated lately. One boy fainted under the operation; another, sixteen years old, had to be held during it, and would have fainted but for sal volatile.

"Above all, really criminal boys seem to be characterised by a wonderful want of self-mastery. As if their hands and feet did not belong to them but to somebody else a sort of demoniacal possession. Our worst boys have been extremely marked by this. In one boy it ran into great extravagancies under recapture-great violence of conduct-seeming attempts at self destruction—as well as the most outrageous assertions In fact the careful and intelligent friend who resides as master in our establishment, and verifies these traits, concludes that the thing which no really criminal boy seems ever to have been taught at all, is self-denial; and the degree of criminality of any boy, in relation to that of any other boy, might be tested by the length, or rather shortness, of time, which he could keep a piece of sugar candy in his pocket without eating it. The desire among them seems simply to acquire rather than to possess, to have rather than to hold. Possession strips things of their value. This accounts for their real poverty under often abundant wealth by theft. In this particular of self-denial our experience is very cheering. The Governor of Worcester County Gaol, remarked the other day, looking at our boys"This is all very well now, where there is constant watching and no temptation, but what will they be when they pass out from being watched into constant temptation?" Little things test and form character. This time last year, an apple tree, or fruit of any sort which abounds here, was a constant trouble. One day the whole of the boys went off to the garden to pilfer, and you could not turn your back walking to church or to bathe, but a boy had a shy at some pendant apples; the sense of chastisement for it wore out in a few hours. This year the cherries ripened in the play-ground without molestation."

This is a fair and truthful account of what the lads really are, and most important is the following well put consideration:

"A reformatory officer, over and above his special function in the establishment, should be a compound of a detective and a devotee. A mere devotee, without judgment and practical sagacity, quick apprehension and concentrated purpose, would be in despair in a week, with an empty school probably. A mere detective would keep or regain his boys, but never reclaim them. In proportion as Reformatories are felt beneficial, anxiety about their permanence is reasonable. I think Magistrates in Sessions might, advisably, have power to continue by rate a voluntary

institution, which by change of property or other contingencies is in danger of being given up. Or a county which has not requirement for a separate institution of its own, or no likelihood of getting one, but which felt confidence in, and gladly would use that of a neighbouring county, might have powers to grant aid in proportion to such use, without interference with the management."

"But more pressing than the establishment or maintenance of Reformatories is, or soon will be, what to do with the boys on their release, and where. Home service will rarely be advisable for the most real and true Reformatory subject. The very way they cling in heart and feeling to their old haunts and homes-"that dear old Brum!"-makes me fear their return to them. If the argument about honest and criminal labour applies anywhere, it does to the bringing back the known criminal youth to supersede, probably, his honest competitor. I trust the Government will aid this looming difficulty by establishing Colonial Correspondents for the reception and employment of the boys. The benefit would soon be felt to be mutual, and any antecedent suspicion removed on experience. If the expence is the difficulty, why not apply one shilling a week for this purpose out of the seven shillings per head now allowed by the Government."

SIR,

PREVALENT DISHONESTY.

TO THE EDITOR OF THE ENGLISH JOURNAL OF EDUCATION.

"The

Allow me to call your attention to this growing vice in the upper classes of society. Sir John Dean Paul's example has been most pernicious. A clergyman's wife in Wales was fined not long ago for "doing" a toll-bar. Not a day passes that the Post Office does not detect notes inserted in book packets sent by gentlemen of ample means who are not satisfied with four ounces for a penny. Literary larcenies are equally plentiful, Literarium," an "educational gazette," is always professing high morality. Not long ago it pilfered an article, without acknowledgement, from Mr. Bromby's excellent "Papers for the Schoolmaster," and in page 2222 of the last number of that immaculate "Literarium," you will find similar service done to an article headed "School Discipline," which first appeared in your Journal three months since.

A noted philanthropist lately induced a corporation to grant him some valuable land at a low price, because he wanted it for cottage allotments to benefit the poor: then resold it at an immense profit.

Do you not think that it would be a good plan if teachers in all schools were to make these knaveries the subject of special moral lessons to their scholars? I dare say some of your numerous readers can favour you with many other instances.

I am, Sir,

Colchester, Sept, 23rd.

Yours truly,

D. S.

LECTURE ON EARLY BRITISH HISTORY.

By Jelinger C. Symons, B.A.

UR origin as a people, and the history and effects of races among us, now known under the modern appellation of Ethnology, open a new branch of antiquarian research even more replete with interest and instruction to us than the richest antiquarian relics. These certainly proclaim the different degrees of handicraft skill, and the various phases of taste in each age of the past, and like York Minster and Strasbourg Cathedral, at once illustrate and memorialize something of the character, and much of the passions and poetry of the ages and people which designed and erected them. Whilst, however, they speak only of the past, Ethnology (beginning at far remoter periods) presents to us the birth and origin of much that belongs to the present. The one tells us only, and that indirectly, of defunct ages: whilst the latter (if we will but read her aright) explains much that is characteristic in ourselves. Historians have treated the early history of England very ill. Hume dismisses the British people, before the invasion of Cæsar, in a single page, as a race of sturdy savages.

This hasty judgment, in times less prone to historical inquiry than our own, pronounced by a writer whose opinions, in the absence of wiser historians, have been deemed authoritative-must have checked the investigation of a subject which, so far from relating merely to the fabulous legends of barbarians, opens to us a field full of interest, and connects us as a people with the early epochs of eastern progress. It also exhibits one of the main stages in the growth and spread of mankind. Mr. Hume having thus put an extinguisher on the early range of Ethnology, Mr. Macaulay does his best to destroy its later existence.

I am well aware of the immense difficulty of grappling with a subject of this magnitude in the compass of a single paper: so as to present even a correct general view of it; and I am, moreover, no less aware of my entire incapacity to do it. I have first striven to collect such main points only in the earlier history of our races, as I could best extricate from a mass of history and legends, sometimes conflicting and often incorrectsuch as seemed to me to be best supported by authorities, likelihood, and results.

I feel that this selection has been imperfectly made, and that my humble efforts are in need of no slight indulgence.

In entering at all on the remote and dim epochs of the English people, where fiction and fable intermingle so closely with facts, and so little can be positively known, I must beg to guard myself from the presumption of offering my conclusions as being anything more than probably true.

In touching on the other branch of my subject, namely the effects (still traceable) of races among us, I must also beg you to remember how very few of these, however striking and unquestionable they may be,—it is possible for me to adduce. On both of these grounds therefore, I cannot hope to prove my case. All I can do is to endeavour to lay before you some materials and facts for reflection and research which abler inquirers I am satisfied would turn to a rich account.

The pretensions of the Welsh people to a direct descent from the first settlers in Britain derives some degree of sanction from the absence of any evidence to the contrary elicited by the recent rigour of ethnological research, and by the development of certain facts and probabilities which tend more or less to give them credence.

The oral traditions and bardic legends of Wales trace the origin of that portion of the people who are free from the alloy of subsequent immigration, to Gomer (the eldest son of Japhet) through the immediate descendants of his first-born son Ashkenaz, who is alleged upon the confusion of tongues to have migrated with his younger brothers, Riphath and Togarmah from the plain of Shinar, where Babel was, in a north-westerly direction to the shores of the Caspian, through Armenia, by the Euphrates into Asia Minor, through Pontus, along the south shore of the Euxine, a sea which for many centuries of the history of the Jews bore his name and proclaimed the origin of those who dwelt around it. They proceeded westward to Bithynia and Mysia, the North Western provinces of Asia Minor, now Anatolia. At an early period, probably within the three or four first centuries after the Deluge, the colony in Bithynia followed the immediate descendants of the younger sons of Gomer. Some crossed the Bosphorus and some the Hellespont or Dardenelles and peopled Thrace, now in Turkey in Europe, and Greece. They spread rapidly round the Euxine and called themselves Cymry, or first race, as being the immediate descendants of the first born in each generation from Noah. They were speedily joined by other tribes of the same stock. They are alleged to have then migrated into the interior of the Western Continent, but to have afterwards disagreed and separated, the younger and more warlike branches expelling the others and spreading northward and eastward, growing into the Scythian and great Gothic hordes of Sarmatia, (a distinct race from the Cimbri) and afterwards overrunning four-fifths of Europe.

For some centuries it is probable that they dwelt and clustered in the countries north of the Euxine. From this hive, offshoots progressively penetrated and peopled the whole territory from the mountains of Carpathia to the Baltic, first known as a nation by the name of the Basternions. The term Scythian, from "Ysgthi," means nothing more than expelled or dispersed persons, and has given rise to the term Goths and been indiscriminately applied to communities in Syria, Egypt, and Asia Minor.

The Cimbric descendants of Ashkenaz on the other hand pursued their Divine destination to the west along the banks of the Danube to its source, about 640, B.C. (according to Eliezer Williams) whence they crossed to that of the Rhine and followed its main stream to its mouth. Those who were last on the Euxine were intrenched in the Crimea, which long bore the name of the Cymbric Chersonese. Arrived at the shores of the German Ocean another, but an amicable division took place. A portion settled where they were, colonised Jutland, and spread subsequently eastward along the shore of the Baltic. A second portion descended into Gaul and settled chiefly in the territory of Armorica. The third and probably the smallest portion of the migrating body passed to this country, and were its first inhabitants.

A large portion of this account and many other statements are derived from the earliest legendary annals of the original inhabitation of Britain.

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