devote to needlework, and the boys to their lessons; and from 2 till 5 the girls are at their lessons and the boys work in the garden.

On one day in the week the lessons of the girls are in domestic economy; on another their industrial work consists in cooking "cottage dinners." The manner in which this is managed appears to me very judicious. They are divided into groups, each of which cooks, under the direction of the mistress, a separate dinner, as for a separate family. The variety of these dinners affords the opportunity of instructing them in different expedients for the frugal management of a house hold.

Whilst so large a portion of the time of the girls is thus devoted to industrial occupations, I can bear testimony (in this as in other similar cases) to the fact, that nothing is thereby lost on the side of their learning.

The Calne Institution for Training Domestic Servants.-In this institution, formed in the summer of 1849 by the vicar's lady, and maintained at her expense, girls are received between the time when they leave school and that when they go to service, and trained in the duties of servants. They reside in the house under the care of a matron, do all the household labour, are instructed in the evening, and contribute, by the washing and getting up of linen, which is taken in for that purpose, and by needlework, towards the support of the institution. It is premature to speak of its success, but the arrangements appeared to me in all respects well calculated to ensure it.

Winkfield Industrial School.-This school was established in 1833, and received a Treasury grant of 707. It stands in an open situation near the church, in the centre of a plot of ground measuring three acres, of which the freehold is vested in the trustees, being the gift of the Dean and Chapter of Salisbury, to be appropriated to the use of the school as an industrial school.

The buildings include a master's house, and a mistress's house, and school-rooms, 26 ft. by 16 ft., for 60 boys and 60 girls, together with a work-room, 20 ft. by 9 ft., now used as a store-room for garden-tools and garden produce. These buildings are exceedingly convenient and well arranged.

The original promoters of this school were the Rev. W. L. Rham, the vicar, a celebrated writer on agriculture, Lord Maryborough, Sir C. Rowley, and Sir H. W. Rooke; and the school appears at one time to have been fully attended, and efficiently maintained. The produce from the garden sold in 1840, over and above what was used by the master and given away to the children, realized 217. 11s. The boys then worked in the garden (as they do still) from 10h. 45m. to 12h. in the

morning, and from 3 to 5 in the afternoon, devoting the rest of their time to learning in the school. No live-stock of any kind appears to have been kept on the ground. There are, indeed, neither pig-sties nor cow-houses. All the manure which was required was purchased, and the produce was sold at the Windsor market.

Archdeacon Allen reported to your Lordships, in 1841, that "the garden was in beautiful order, and the manner and appearance of the children much in their favour."

The original promoters of the school are now dead; and I regret to have to report, at a time when the formation of industrial schools is so much a matter of interest, that this is no longer efficiently conducted.

The profits of the garden are, by the rules of the school, to be divided among the boys; but there are at present no profits. The parents having been accustomed to look to a remuneration for the labour of their children, do not, therefore, send them to school. The number in attendance being now reduced to 30, and there being only 5 boys in the school above 10 years of age, and none above 13, the ground cannot all be cultivated; and as that which has been cultivated has not for some years been manured, the produce does not repay the labour of cultivation.

The Quatt Industrial School.-Although the history of this school has on more than one occasion been brought under your Lordships' notice, and, through Mr. Jelinger Symons' Report, has probably become known to all parties interested in the schools of parochial unions, yet I have thought it expedient to re-produce here the principal facts stated in that Report, for the information of many friends of education into whose hands it is not likely to fall.

The school is that of the pauper union of Bridgenorth, and consists of 32 boys and 19 girls, who occupy a private dwellinghouse, rented, with four acres and a-haif of land, in the rural village of Quatt, about four miles from the workhouse.

It is placed in charge of a master, acting in the double capacity of master of the house and schoolmaster, and of his wife, who is the matron.

The girls are occupied in household work and dairy work, and in washing, ironing, and baking, and making and mending their own clothes.

Three, and occasionally four cows are kept, and from four to eight pigs and a pony. Of the boys, 17 are above 10 years of age, but not above 13; and 15 of these, with the assistance of the master, cultivate the land, and look after the cows, the pigs and pony. The children rise at half-past five in summer, and a quarter to seven in winter, and work till eight, then go

to breakfast, go to school from nine to twelve, dine at one; work from two to five, sup at six, being singers at the parish church, they practice chaunts and psalms at seven, and prayers having been said, they go to bed at eight. They devote to their amusements all the hours for which no other occupation is specified in this time-table. Mr. Symonds states, their attainments in the subjects in which they are instructed in the school to be greatly superior to those of most workhouse schools in which there is no industrial training. The following is the account he gives of their labours in the field-garden :

66

The crops grown are carrots, cabbage, mangel-wurzel, potatoes, turnips, rape, Italian rye-grass, and vetches, following in a quick succession, so that the land is never allowed to lie idle, except in the depth of winter.

"The implements used are the spade, fork, hoe, liquid manure-barrel and cart."

The average weight per acre of the crops grown is cabbage, 50 tons; carrots, 20 to 24 tons; swedes, 30 tons; wurzels, 30 or 40 tons; potatoes, more than 12 tons.

The value of the produce averaged in 1847, 257. per acre, and was still greater in the following year.

The rent paid for the land is 27. 10s. per acre.

The profits amount on an average to from 607. to 70l. per annum, after the payment of rent and taxes, and interest on the capital sunk in building the cow-house, the shed, and tank, and in enclosing and draining the land.

Those persons who may be sceptical as to these results, I refer to the Appendix to Mr. Symonds' Report, where they will find them authenticated.

Besides the advantage of general judicious management which this garden has, in common with so many others, it has this peculiar to school-gardening, that the labour being performed by the boys, is not charged as an outlay, and that a large quantity of liquid manure is supplied by the house, which, together with that from the cow-houses, pig-sties and stables, is carefully collected by drains and a tank, and constantly applied to the land and sometimes to the growing

crops.

*

earned daily

Taking the profits of the labour of these 15 boys at 607. per The sum annum, and allowing six working days in the week, I find that by each boy. this is equivalent to 3d. per day, per boy. Now I have before

* Mr. Sotheron, the member for North Wiltshire, having visited the farm at Quatt, has recently undertaken the cultivation of one of his own farms by the aid of 50 youths, from the age of 16 to 22, whom he proposes to board and lodge in the farmhouse, and to pay them wages in proportion to the value of the work done by each. They are, moreover, to have two hours' schooling in the day. If the produce of their labour exceed the expenses of the institution, it is to be applied to the support of labourers past work. There seems to be good prospect of the success of the experiment.

sufficient to

This sum is me a statement of the cost of providing a dinner daily for a school of one hundred children, whose average age is from 10 to 11 years, some of them being more than 14, and others less than 10. They have meat every day of the week, except one, and the fare is substantial and abundant; the circumstances of the case rendering no ecomony necessary, except in so far as it is considered expedient to enforce it as a principle.

provide a dinner for each boy daily.

Plan for an industrial school.

The average cost of the dinners of these children is less than 24d. per day per child.

I have also obtained, and appended to this Report (Appendix B), a copy of the dietary of the boys of the Greenwich Hospital School, and a statement of the total cost of their diet for one week (Appendix C). From this I find that the total cost of their whole food per boy per day is somewhat less than 5 d. Allowing, therefore, that the breakfast and supper cost together as much as the dinner, this is at about the same rate as the former calculation. These are, however, all big boys, from 12 to 15 years of age; and the system of allowances necessarily adopted in the school, by which every boy has the same quantity of food supplied to him, so that, in order that the big boys may have enough, the little boys must have more than enough, is an extravagant one. In the Bridewell schools, where the inmates vary in age from 10 to 18 years, the cost of food day is 5d. On the whole, then, 24d. may be considered the extreme cost of a dinner with proper management.

per

It is plain, therefore, that the 15 boys of the Quatt School earn a good deal more than the cost of their dinners daily; and I think I am justified in assuming, that the like number of boys of similar ages in any village school aided by the master, having the same facilities for cultivating the same number of acres of ground, and devoting to the cultivation of it the same number of hours daily, might, in like manner, earn for themselves, and for three or four of the elder girls employed in the work of the dairy and the kitchen, a meal daily, of much humbler fare perhaps than that of the school of which I have spoken; but probably more substantial and more abundant than they could get at home.* It might improve with any improvement in the cultivation of the land or with any increase in the industry of the little labourers. The value of improved methods of cultivation and greater industry could scarcely be brought home to them under any other form, indeed, in which they would be so likely to understand it. Whilst by this arrangement the training of the children in habits of forethought and industry would be provided for, the removal of a

To be convinced of this, it is only necessary to inquire what kind of dinners poor children who live at a distance are accustomed to bring to eat at school.

tages of this

school.

portion of the burden of their maintenance from the parent The advanwould probably secure their attendance at school to a more plan of an advanced age. Thus, what was sacrificed of their school industrial learning on the one hand, by setting apart only half the day to it, instead of the whole day, would be gained on the other hand by their continuing at school longer.

The value of that moral influence which might, by a judicious master, be exercised over the boys when associated with them during their hours of labour and at their meals,* will, I am sure, be appreciated by every practical educationist. It is during these hours that the real characters of the children become known, and at such times that the springs of action among them may be influenced and controlled, and the public opinion of the school brought over to the side of the school

master.

by which the

required by

may be pro

It is, however, after all, necessary that some provision Arrangement should be made for those labours upon a farm which are labour of the performed by children. The birds must be driven from the children fields of growing corn, the cattle, the geese, and pigs must at the farmer at certain seasons be watched, and in certain counties the vided for. wheat must be dibbled and the potatoes picked. Any attempt to deprive the farmer of the labour of the children in these times would not be reasonable in itself, and would probably fail of its object.

Peace should be made between him and the schoolmaster. To this end it might be arranged, that when the farmer

wanted any such assistance upon the farm, he should come to the schoolmaster, who would be bound to provide for him (so far as the numbers in the school admitted of it) the services of as many boys not under 10 years of age as he might need; with this condition, that the same child should not be employed more than one-half of the day, being relieved, when his half-day was finished, by another boy; and that then, returning to the school to take his meal, he should give the afternoon to

his books.

Thus every child above 10 years of age working half the day, either for the school or the farmer, would devote the other half to his learning. In the arrangement I have proposed, the farmer would probably find his advantage as much as the boy.

• At the school of St. Mark's, Windsor, the boys breakfast with the schoolmaster, each bringing his bread and butter, and the clergyman providing the cocoa. I doubt not that this meal, eaten in common by the teacher and children, has contributed largely to the high moral tone and discipline of that remarkable school; and it is a great satis faction to me to find the opinion I hold on this subject supported by the experience of so able and so devoted a friend to the education of the people as the Rev. Stephen Hawtrey. The most perfect idea we can form of a school approaches most nearly to that of a wellordered family, and, of the proper relation of the teacher and his scholars, to that of a parent and his children. It is perhaps difficult to conceive this idea to be realized unless they take their meals together.