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then (May 1873) in contemplation at Merthyr Tydvil, and for the district school of Glamorganshire. He admits that the separate schools at Caerleön and Ely, to which the Guardians of the Newport and Cardiff unions had removed their children, deserved the high praise they had elicited from all who had visited and examined them. Admirable, however,' he says, as are the separate schools at Caerleön and Ely, it can hardly be doubted that a great improvement would be effected in the system upon which such schools were 'organised, if instead of being associated in large numbers, the children could be separated into families; if, for the one huge building in which several hundred children are 'massed together, you could substitute a village in which they might be distributed in cottage homes, leading, as nearly as may be, the lives of the best class of cottagers' children.' It is because it is a return to nature-the organisation being on the basis of the habits of domestic lifethat the Continental system, of which Pestalozzi may be regarded as the originator, and of which Mettray, Hamburg, and Düsseldorf are brilliant examples, has been unequivocally successful. The children are divided into groups or families of boys and girls together, generally speaking, with a superinten- . dent at the head of each family, who discharges the duties of father, and whose wife assists in the housekeeping, and in the supervision and industrial training of the girls. A director presides over the whole, and watches over the general interests. Each family lives in a separate cottage; the chapel, the school, the workshops, and the playground being alone common to the whole number, and serving as a bond of association among the different families. The classification into families possesses numerous advantages. As Mr. Fletcher remarked: It facilitates the study of character, and the peculiar treatment, so to 'speak, of each moral peculiarity; it lightens the weight of surveillance and renders it more efficacious; it binds the members of the family tighter together by fraternal ties; it permits the separation of those who mutually annoy, and the re-union of those who are agreeable to each other, and stimulates emulation.'

At Mettray, which is intended for children of the criminal classes, the sexes are not mixed, and the families are very large, numbering as many as 40; the late M. Demetz, the founder of the colony, though preferring smaller numbers, having been afraid of overweighting the establishment with officials. The superintendent or father' has two assistants or eldest sons,' who are elected by the children themselves, and with the best

results-the election made by the children being stated to be as true to the interests of the colony as the appointments to 'the higher offices that depend upon the care and judgment of 'M. Demetz himself.' In the most successful of the Swiss and German schools, the family is restricted to six boys and six girls, a point which is strongly insisted upon by Mr. George Bunsen, of the Rauhe Haus, Hamburg, as all increase in the numbers tends to make it more difficult to maintain a genuine domestic feeling, and allow the work of individual education to progress with that of collective education.' Mr. Doyle recommends for England that the families should consist of eight children of tender age, with four more advanced to assist in the management of them, as elder brothers or sisters, and that the families should be placed under the care, not of highly-salaried officials, but of persons of good character and domestic habits, whose services might be obtained for a moderate remuneration. He does not conceal, however, that difficulty may be experienced in finding suitable persons for the purpose, and that on the power of surmounting this difficulty the success of the scheme greatly depends. By way of demonstrating the difficulty, he cites the experience of the Rev. Sydney Turner in regard to the Reformatory at Red Hill. This experience incidentally illustrates so strikingly the superiority of the 'family' over the collective' system, that we cannot refrain from reproducing it here. After mentioning that they had commenced with an imitation of the family system of the Continent, but had been obliged to depart from it in consequence of the difficulty of finding masters who could work it satisfactorily, Mr. Turner says, 'But we have been driven 'from that collective system and compelled to resort to the 'family system again, and to cope with all the difficulties that we may meet with in finding masters by the evidently unfavour⚫able results which the collective system began to yield.' He observed, he says, 'a deterioration of the moral improvement in the boys generally. They were more mechanical, and their voluntary action and moral conduct were decidedly inferior to what they had been. Petty dishonesty, evasion, and acts of cunning became common among them, and the 'boys themselves became restless, and seemed to lose the 'affection they used to have, and a great many more endeavoured to escape."

It is probable that some of the difficulty of finding suitable superintendents may have arisen from too high an educational standard having been adopted; that the managers of the institution looked more for tutors than for fathers;' and that if

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Mr. Frederic Hill's suggestion (in his evidence before the Select Committee on Criminal and Destitute Children) were followed, and the officials selected were themselves working men, a sufficient number of desirable persons would be at once forthcoming. Mr. Hill thought it important that they should be working men, in order that they might not be too refined to associate freely with the children, to work with them, eat with them, and be much in their society.

Better testimony, however, than Mr. Turner's, of the difference in the working of the two systems, could hardly be desired; for although the boys spoken of belong to the criminal class, we have it on Mr. Tufnell's authority that they are the same class of children as are to be found in pauper schools. Practically,' he says in a report to the Committee of Council on Education in 1856-7, the workhouse schools of London are mostly filled with the same description of abandoned children; and thus I find, in visiting refuges and reformatories, precisely the same characteristics among the inmates, the same difficulties and evils with which I am so familiar in respect to pauper children.' And not only does Mr. Tufnell acknowledge the two classes of children to be practically one, but what is far more remarkable, he makes the following admission about Reformatory children: In order to reform a child of that 'description, you must have the family system.' We rub our eyes with astonishment! Are we dreaming? Is this the Mr. Tufnell who in his last reports emphatically declares, not once, but again and again, that nothing can equal or even approach the success of the plan of uniting the children in large schools on the district system.' It was in 1857, apparently, that he made this statement, which is quoted by Mr. Doyle, about the family system. Has he altered his opinion completely since then, or is his one of those minds gifted with the faculty of entertaining at the same time, with equal impartiality, directly conflicting opinions?

We have already alluded to the Eton Workhouse School; how its admirable appearance was found to be delusive, and the result of its training a failure. We should now mention that having thereupon tried sending the children to the Central London District School, the Guardians were still dissatisfied with the condition of their children. Their health was not good, and the cost of their maintenance was almost double, while many of the evils of the workhouse were not avoided. Towards the close of 1863, the Guardians wrote to the Poor Law Board expressing their dissatisfaction with a system which environs a child in an atmosphere of mechanical routine

and compulsory discipline, as different as can well be conceived from that of the family, or from those conditions of outward life upon which it will hereafter have to enter. With a training so wholly unnatural,' the Guardians say, it 'is rather matter for wonder that any should turn out well, than that many should turn out very ill.' Finally, they resolved upon boarding out their children with respectable cottagers, the Guardians allowing 3s. 6d. a week, to be paid weekly by the relieving officer of the district, for board and lodging. An outfit was provided, and after three months' expiry, 6s. 6d. was paid quarterly, in advance, for clothes. The children were to attend a Sunday-school, where practicable, and a Day-school during the week (the fees being paid by the Guardians) until the age of thirteen, when they might be employed for wages in any labour approved by the Guardians, two-thirds of the wages being deducted by the relieving officer for his weekly payments, and the remaining third going to the person in charge of the child, in consideration of the extra expense in food and clothing which its employment might entail. After three years' experience of the plan, the Guardians issued a report expressing a strong conviction that the 'system of boarding-out the children was greatly to be pre'ferred both to the old Workhouse School and to the District Schools, such as those of Hanwell and Norwood.' Experience had led them to control the visits of the relieving officer by visits from members of their own body, at least twice a year; a report, in writing, on the condition of each child being furnished after each visit. When practicable, a report was also obtained from the clergyman in whose parish the children were boarded. Thus a continual and permanent intercourse with them was maintained, and the Guardians were kept well informed how they were going on. The relative cost of the three systems was as follows: In the workhouse, the charge per head amounted to 4s. 24d. per week; at Hanwell it amounted to 8s. per week; and in the cottage to 4s. 2d.!

These two illustrations, drawn from the experience of the Red Hill Reformatory and the Eton Poor Law Guardians, sufficiently demonstrate that in England as well as on the Continent, the practical need for a more natural system of education than is afforded by large boarding-schools has been distinctly felt; and disclose two ways in which that need can be supplied, viz. by boarding-out the children in cottage homes, or by educating them in small schools on the family system. We must, however, mention a couple of points in the administration of the Continental schools to which Mr. Doyle in a

large measure attributes the success they have unquestionably attained. These are: First, that the children are not sent out so young as from our workhouse and district schools; and he suggests as worthy of consideration, whether girls, at least, should not be kept at school until they have reached the full age of fourteen, by which time a more durable impression may have been made upon their character, and they will be better fitted for service. And secondly-and this is the more important point-a direct communication is kept up with the children who have been placed out. It is, for instance, the business of a central bureau in Paris to keep the authorities at Mettray informed of the whereabouts, condition, and conduct of every child who has left the institution. And this is done with so much judgment, that the children, far from trying to shake off the trammels of official questionings, give the fullest information about themselves, and keep up a strong feeling of interest in the home' they have left. Theoretically, of course, communication is kept up in England with the children who have been placed out; but the theory only assumes such intercourse to be maintained up to the age of sixteen, and the practice is, generally speaking, far from coming up to this moderate standard. There is a want of system in the arrangements, and the matter is very much left to chance. In some unions the children will be well looked after. In others they will be neglected. All depends upon the individuals. But in any case as to what becomes of the children after the age of sixteen, the State does not inquire; and this being so, it is absolutely impossible to judge from the official statistics how far the children brought up at pauper schools succeed in afterlife. It is quite evident that percentages reckoned upon the simple plan of counting as successes all who have not come again under the official ken, by returning to the workhouse, must be fallacious; and that by accepting these pleasant statistics without attempting seriously to verify them, we are living in a fool's paradise.

One part of Mrs. Nassau Senior's inquiry was directed to this very object, the testing of the success of the system, as proved by the career of the girls in after-life. For this purpose she obtained the names and addresses (as far as these were known) of the 670 girls who had been placed out in service from the Metropolitan District Schools during the years 1871 and 1872; and the history of each girl, as derived from the books or otherwise, was sought to be verified by 'personal investigation.' The immense number of visits and inquiries involved in this investigation rendered it impossible