sorrows before they are capable of entering upon our enjoyments." *

Irrespective of the shoals of illegitimate and orphan children-3,000 of the latter class being annually committed to prison in England †-the great mass of destitution, and consequent criminality, is further augmented by the youthful progeny of vicious and brutal parents, from whose inhuman control, ill-treatment, and intolerable abodes, they are but too glad to flee. Under such circumstances what can be expected but infamy and ruin? Let their minds be ever so well disposed, their intentions ever so upright, they are not equal to the sharp situation in which they find themselves. Like a fragile reed borne rapidly upon an eddying current, they become the mere sport of destiny, until they are finally engulphed within its stormy vortex.

Alluding to these unfortunate classes, the Chaplain of Manchester Gaol asks: "What resource has a lad without parents, or what is perhaps worse, with drunken and vicious ones, a wretched home, and precarious subsistence; what refuge is open to such a one but a prison? Gloomy, penal, and

* The Old Curiosity Shop.

First Report of the Birmingham Conference on Reformatory Schools, &c.

repulsive as it may seem, its forbidding aspect is greatly lessened when contrasted with the miserable hovel, ragged and scanty covering by day and night, want of proper nourishment and warmth with which, from his very infancy, he has been familiar."* Rigid moralists, and people who pride themselves upon their esoteric correctness, may not be inclined to make allowance for any breach of the eighth commandment; but there are not wanting those-and good men too-whose views of right and wrong disdain to be measured by the square and compass. Solomon, the wisest of lawgivers, says, "Do not despise a thief if he steal to satisfy his soul when he is hungry;" and assuredly if there be such a thing as mercy, it should be extended readily to such; who, one is disposed to believe with Dr. Guthrie, will “ never stand at God's bar for that crime."

The description of juvenile wretchedness furnished by the various refuges recently established, presents a sad and gloomy picture of our social state, and affords a painful contrast to British wealth and influence in the scale of nations. Hard indeed must that man's heart be, who can read unmoved the following story. People have been known to shed tears over imaginary suffering,

* Rev. P. J. O'Leary's Report for 1851.

† Prov. vi. 30.

being wrought upon by the power of human eloquence; but here is stern reality, the production of no novelist's pen :

"J. B. is a little fellow between nine and ten years of age. He was born in Ireland. His father died when he was an infant; his mother when he was very young. After her death he was put into the workhouse, from whence he was taken by his grandmother and sent to his aunt in Cardiff. Here we again find him in the workhouse, from which he was again withdrawn by his aunt, and, in company with her, her husband and children, he came up to London. They walked the whole way and arrived in the metropolis; his uncle endeavoured to convert Johnny into a tailor, but the boy failing to prove an adept at the needle, his relatives sent him into the streets to earn his own living,' while they betook themselves he knows not whither. The world of London was now before him,-'where to choose his place of rest.' Where that generally was is a point difficult to determine, but the last place was at the 'hot stoves' in Leman-street, Whitechapel. This is the outside of a sugar bakery, the furnaces in which heat the pavement; and, as this renders the place very comfortable in winter nights, it forms a favourite resort of juvenile wretchedness; so many as a score of miserable boys being sometimes found there huddled together, rejoicing in the heat. This

was Johnny's 'place of rest.' There is another resort of the same kind in Lambeth, which is much frequented. On the 31st December last, when the keen wind was biting through woollen and broad cloth, Johnny was picked up by a city missionary and brought to the Refuge. He had neither shoe nor stocking. His trousers, which were ingeniously tied with twine, were split up as far as his thigh; but as he wore a very old tattered coat, made originally for a boy fourteen years of age, and which reached down to his knees, this little defect was only partially visible. Notwithstanding this, however, the cold had done its office, and the poor child was so benumbed and stupified by its effects, that for some time he appeared half crazy, and seemed incapable of comprehending anything that was said to him. Such is the history of Johnny B., a child of nine years of age, wandering barefooted through London streets in the month of December, without a friend in the wide world." *

From another publication issued by the same institution I reproduce a case scarcely less distressing than the former :-"W. B., aged fourteen; an orphan. His mother died when he was a child, and his father, who was very kind, and used to take him to church regularly, married again.

First Report (1855) of the Boys' Refuge, Whitechapel.

Stepmother married again after his father's death, and she and her second husband both became drunkards. They used him very harshly, and ultimately deserted him. For about a month he slept under butchers' blocks; was taken into the employment of a Merry Andrew, but was dismissed because he could not bend his back; fell into the hands of a band of strolling gipsies, with whom he wandered about for nearly three months; found his way into Field-lane Refuge, and earned his living by holding horses, etc.'

It is almost impossible to conceive the misery and sufferings of those poor wretches who are thus early thrown upon the world to shift for themselves. "The condition of many of the girls admitted to the Refuge," says another report, "is of the most pitiable description. Without father and without mother; without friends and without home; sometimes introduced by the police, but more often by compassionate strangers, prompted by that pity which Christianity is ever ready to bestow upon the unfortunate. Others are the children of neglect; parents they indeed have, but so debased, as to disentitle them even to the care of their offspring."+

That children so adversely placed fall into the

* Statement of the Boys' Refuge for the Prevention of Crime. + Report of the Albert Street Refuge, Spitalfields.