in costume being at all events one step towards the preservation of self-respect." And elsewhere he says: "All the clothes worn in the establishment are made there." And again, "many of the colonists come from the seaports, and are not only the children of sailors, but have themselves received the usual early initiation into the ways and workings of a seaman's life. Now, if these children are to be good for anything, they are to be made good sailors. A piece of ground, shaped like the horizontal section of a ship, is partitioned off with bulwarks, and fitted up with masts, sails, and rigging, like a vessel of considerable tonnage, and the young sailors are exercised every day by an experienced boatswain, in the various manipulations of the sails, yards, and ropes. We only quote these as instances of what we would wish to recommend, that the manual labour in the reformatory school should, according to the circumstances of each inmate, be such as would be most likely to be useful to him after he leaves it.

But notwithstanding all we have endeavoured to say in favour of the prompt and adequate establishment of Catholic Reformatory Schools, we must still acknowledge that innocence is better than repentance; that it is easier to train an innocent child in the way in which it should walk, than to bring back the wanderer who has deviated from the proper course; that the same means applied to train innocent children to godliness, will yield many more good men and women than if applied to the training of juvenile offenders; and that therefore, with our limited means, it would be very perverse and distorted economy to establish only complete Reformatory Schools, whilst we leave any of our young untainted Catholic children without the opportunity of obtaining sound religious instruction. A good elementary school attached to each mission, with a competent master and mistress, (of a religious order if possible, or next with certified teachers if they can be had,) is the best, i.e., the most easy, most economical, and most effectual Reformatory School. And now that government is prepared to do so much towards the building of such elementary schools, and towards the support of pupil teachers and certified teachers in them, there is little excuse for any Catholic congregation being without such a school for the instruction of all the poor Catholic children of the neighbourhood. Whatever can be said in behalf of Reformatory Schools may a fortiori be urged in behalf of these

elementary schools; and we trust, therefore, that the rising zeal for the one will not lead to any diminished exertion for the other. We would presume to suggest to every individual Catholic the reflection whether there be in his own neighbourhood any one poor Catholic child without a school to which he can resort, to learn his religion and all his duties in life; and if it occur to him that there is one such, that it becomes his duty at once to set to work to do his own utmost, and to co-operate with others, in establishing a school there It will be far indeed from any credit to us Catholics if, after founding and maintaining for a few years our Reformatory Schools, their statistics prove that we have an undue or even a large number of criminals, whom indeed we train and reform in a very excellent manner, a large proportion of whom come out thoroughly reformed, but whose places are constantly filled by an equally large supply of fresh inmates. Such a result as this would immediately be pointed at by our Protestant neighbours as a proof of the inferior morality of the Catholic religion, whilst in truth it would only be a proof of our inferior means and our inferior zeal.

We must have adequate Reformatory Schools, because, even when the utmost possible efforts have been made to train the infant mind to virtue, bad example, bad companions, the cravings of want, or the temptations of vice, some, or one of these, or of the many other snares which surround youth, will lead some into the commission of crime.

Whilst, therefore, Reformatory Schools are a necessity, and whilst we seek to establish and maintain them in the best possible order, our primary and most essential duty is to keep them as empty as possible. Let us, therefore, endeavour to reform, but let us still more endeavour to prevent vice. Even those who may lapse into vicious courses are more likely subjects for reformatory discipline, if the hour of meditation in prison can carry back their thoughts to the good instruction which they imbibed in years of innocence, and which in those moments will again exert its wholesome influence over them.

The religious educational orders in the Catholic Church are also peculiarly calculated to lead others properly to esteem our faith from the good fruits which it yields in this particular branch of charity. But we are lamentably deficient in the pecuniary means. We have a nobility and gentry, some of whom give liberally towards the education of the poor;

we have a very numerous poor needing aid in order to their education; but we are weak in that middle element which forms the sinewy strength and motive power of every social body; the mercantile, professional, manufacturing and trading classes. We venture to say that, circumstanced as we are in this country, it is education alone which can greatly enlarge our pecuniary means of promoting education. Who form the middle class of England, the industrious, energetic, honest and successful men in every branch of trade? Generally speaking, the sons or grandsons of working men. It seldom happens in the manufacturing towns that any established business is continued for three generations in the same lineal line. The better taught, more industrious, and most energetic sons of the hard, but skilful-handed artizans are constantly rising to fill up the vacant places in the busy and thriving middle class. Why not more Catholics thus rise into more lucrative positions? Cultivated intelligence, persevering activity, and tried integrity are the usual requisites for the achievement. Why are so many of them still mere hewers of wood and drawers of water, engaged in the most laborious but least skilled and least profitable employments? Something is no doubt owing to the prejudices of Protestant employers. But the more qualified the man the less need he fear prejudice. Skill is sought by the employer instead of having to seek employment. Our Catholic poor have great natural intelligence, industry and energy which are often astonishing; and aptitude both physical and mental, to become successful and even distinguished in any occupation. The conscientiousness of the Catholic forms also a more than average qualification for positions of trust and confidence. We would wish to see the skilled Catholic artizan and the superior Catholic accountant and clerk triumph over prejudice, and command employment by making it the interest of every Protestant employer to engage him, and more Catholics also by dint of superior acquirements become employers themselves. Education is one of the means by which this improvement in position is to be effected. We are comparatively deficient in the pecuniary means; let us endeavour to make up for it by more zeal, by greater self-sacrifices, by more earnest individual exertions, and more cordial and general co-operation, by every one who is above receiving assistance himself, subscribing something towards the school of

his own locality, and the members of every congregation sending up regularly an appropriate contribution to the funds of the Catholic poor school committee. We claim to have a more pure religion, should it not show itself in more perfect charity? in our charitable subscriptions and our charitable zeal being greater in proportion to our means than those of our Protestant neighbours? We wish we could truly say that we were so distinguished; and we trust, yet to see the day when such a distinction may with truth be attributed to us. Schools, such as we have mentioned, in every congregation, well cared for and well conducted, would not only make good Catholics and good and useful members of society, and leave comparatively few inmates for the workhouse, and still fewer for Catholic Reformatory Schools; but would also tend to qualify all to earn good wages, and many to rise into superior, more confidential, and more lucrative employments; would promote, in fact, the formation of an intelligent, active, honest, thriving, and gradually increasing Catholic middle class, who would be both able and willing to swell the amount of support to those schools to which they had been themselves indebted for their early instruction. These schools, therefore, besides being a blessing to both their scholars and their founders, and most effectually sustaining and diffusing the light of our faith, would also reproduce their own best supporters, and be maintained in increasing efficiency by the increasing means of their own offspring.

The topic of Catholic Reformatory Schools for juvenile offenders has necessarily led us to that of schools for all poor Catholic children. We trust that no one will think that a subscription to the former can make an increased subscription to the latter needless; if the former are necessary, and assuredly they are so, the latter are, if possible, still more necessary; if the former can do good, the latter can do still more good; the former can never supply the place of, and hardly even diminish the occasion for the latter; whilst the latter, if increased in number and well supported, can and will lessen the extent of evil qualification for the former. As a Catholic organization has commenced for the establishment and maintenance of Reformatory Schools in various counties or districts of the kingdom, why may not this organization be made applicable also to the establishment, and more effectual maintenance of primary Catholic schools in the same localities,

the objects, resources, and principles of management being in both alike, if not identical; and when some half score gentlemen are brought twenty or fifty miles from their several homes to a central point of meeting, there would be obvious convenience and economy in getting as large an amount of consultative work out of them as possible; we would beg, therefore, with due deference, to suggest whether the Catholic Poor School Committee in London, and the recently appointed committees for the establishment of Reformatory Schools in various parts of the country might not easily and advantageously be brought into correspondence and co-operation with each other.

ART. IV.-1. The History of England. By JOHN LINGARD, D. D. Fifth Edition. (vol. iii.) 10 vols. 8vo. London. Dolman, 1849.* 2. Foss' Judges of England, vols. iii. and iv. London: Longmans.

NGLISHMEN regard with pride the age of Edward III., but it is a pride which is usually misinformed. There is in it a confused idea of conquest, which, in fact,

* It is unnecessary to repeat our eulogies upon this great work; or upon this extremely cheap and useful edition of it. Neither is it necessary to make any apology for supplying occasionally some matter of confirmation or illustration (we can scarcely ever say correction) in addition to those stores of learning by which it is enriched. Suffice it to say that the great author by no means made it part of his plan to state the Catholic case as strongly as he could, but quite the reverse; he endeavoured to state it as moderately as possible, always in that respect taking care to understate the truth. To supply occasional omissions of such an historian cannot derogate from his merit, but may rather enhance his impartiality. No error on the other side has ever been proved against Lingard. An attempt has recently been made to do so by a contemporary (we allude to an article in the New Quarterly) but it is really so frivolous as to require no further notice.