common life of these boys, that one felt what a world of new ideas and feelings they were being introduced to. From the way they looked at and spoke of the country to each other when they were there, and spoke of it after returning, I am sure many of them, if they live till ninety, will remember that one day, and with a feeling more beneficial to their minds than any which months of ordinary schooling would be likely to produce.'

6

The next year an equally successful expedition was made to Herne Bay. This last season they received an invitation to Farnham Castle from the Bishop of Winchester, in whose diocese the factories are placed, and who seems to have taken a more apostolic view of episcopal hospitality' than has been much in vogue of late. A wiser act could not have been done. The day was a day' indeed; all went off most admirably. The Bishop and his household threw themselves heart and soul into the work of entertaining their new guests-the guests, whose only notions of Bishops, probably, had been derived from the penny literature and caricatures of Lambeth Cut, were carried away into something like enthusiasm by the humane and Christian attention with which they were received; when they found the proud, purpled, spiritual Dives of their imaginations changed into a mild, affable, generous host, a rapid revolution of early ideas was effected on the spot. They were suffered to ramble at will over the stately old palace and its picturesque grounds; they were treated and trusted as friends, and they felt the treatment. No high-born company could have behaved more decorously than those five hundred artisans, young and old, thus let loose for a summer's day. Divine service, it may be supposed, was part of the refreshment thought of in such a place; and when, in a beautiful little church near the castle, the Psalms broke forth from the whole company of the mechanics with hearty harmony, the Bishop was visibly affected, and had need thank God for witnessing such a scene. A few such days would turn the tide of Radicalism and infidelity and the worse forms of dissent which leaven the lower districts of our large towns. Let the higher clergy mix with the poor, meet them, show personal interest in their welfare, treat them with personal kindness, instead of being only seen through carriage windows as they drive along the streets, or on Confirmation days as they cross the pavement amid a blaze of beadles, and the good they may effect is untold.

The cricket and the excursion, let us remember, were used as a sort of reward-tickets for those who had stuck well to the winter evening school, and the manager is quite ready to defend his use of such sugar-plums :

"When it is considered how very much you are asking of a boy,

in asking him, after working hard in the factory from six in the morning till half-past five or six in the evening, to come into it again at half-past six for schooling till eight, and this for three or four days a week, during eight months together-and that this is asked not only of the best boys, and those naturally eager for improvement, but of all the very mixed set which such a factory as ours necessarily contains-you will not be surprised that, while always holding out the improvement as the grand inducement to belong to the school, we are glad with the general run of them to avail ourselves of other inducements also. The matter might be settled very simply by authority:but with boys beyond a certain age any such attendance as that would do them harm instead of good; while any attendance which is entirely the result of their own free will must do good-first, in the mere amount of useful knowledge gained, and secondly (but first in point of importance) in the effects of their being brought under the whole of our system; for once under that it is no matter of choice with them whether they are affected or not-they cannot avoid being so, whether they like it or not. Occasionally, in the beginning of the busy time in autumn, when we have had to take on a few elder lads, strangers, and they have been admitted at once to the school and cricket, it has been quite interesting to watch the rapid change, in external manners at least, produced in them, quite involuntarily on their part. The rough ones among them would, on the first evening of the cricket, be rude and selfish in their behaviour; and the first evening in the school they would take into their hands, with an air of mixed insolence and shame, the book for the hymn with which the school closes, and then kneel down for the prayer with the same manner—a look of "I won't refuse to do this, but I feel quite above it." But a very few evenings in the cricket and school bring them almost unconsciously to the same habit of civility and reverence as the rest; and we may hope that the change, external no doubt at first, must by degrees work inwards more or less.'

With a wise and kindly feeling for the health and physical refreshment of the fellow-creatures placed under his governanceitself a part of Christian feeling and Christian prudence, though often under-rated by the religious world'-the young manager, we must see, was watching for and catching at every opportunity to engraft Christian principles and habits. Having felt his way, and succeeded in getting among his men and boys-in breaking the ice between the employer and the employed, and in effecting a considerable moral change-he next proceeded to act more directly upon the religious character of the factory. We have been told, and we hope there is no indelicacy in repeating, that the impressions from which the whole of the Belmont movement in fact arose may be traced to his perusal, about the same time, of the Lives of Dr. Arnold and Mrs. Godolphin; but that after repeated perusals of the latter charming book, his reflections had rested especially

on

on the importance of that daily attendance on divine service to which Evelyn's saint continually refers as the chief support and solace of her brief career. Himself more and more occupied with the commercial business of the growing concern, Mr. Wilson felt it essential to have one who could give up his whole time and care to what he regarded as a still higher department of duty-and accordingly he added to his staff a clergyman of the Church, who seems to have entered on the work with the same earnest spirit. 'I look upon this appointment,' says the thoughtful and modest Manager, as the means of binding together and securing all the efforts for good that are being made in the factory, for there are many of us anxious to help forward all that is good, but we are all busy, and it seems much better that the originating and superintending of the educational arrangements should not be with any of us, but with some person with nothing else to attend to, and that we in our several positions in the factory should only have to back him up and assist him.'

6

The Belmont chaplain has no sinecure. At a quarter to six every morning he gives a short service for the men who are inclined to attend it before commencing work, and are there joined by men who have been working all the night-a sort of family worship on a large scale. They sing a hymn, have some verses of Scripture read, and join together in a few prayers. This occupies about twenty minutes, and then another short service is commenced for the boys. When this is over the chaplain attends in the Night Light' School till breakfast-time four days in the week; and the other two mornings he spends a similar space in the Candle Factory Morning School-being there occupied with a class of the most forward boys whom he desires to train as monitors for the evening school. After breakfast the brothermanagers, and their foremen, Mr. Cradock and Mr. Day, have a short service with the chaplain before the counting-house work commences. At five minutes to nine the day-school opens, and the chaplain visits and works in it. In the afternoon he visits the sick at their own houses, and thus becomes acquainted with the factory families. Mr. Wilson's notice of the opportunity embraced for instituting the early services is not to be omitted:

'The six o'clock service for the men was begun on the occasion of a fine lad of nineteen, a general favourite with all who had worked with him, being drowned through the swamping of a boat, in which he and three more of our young men were rowing, with one of the boys to steer them. The others were nearly drowned also, and after this shock they wished for some help in religion between Sunday and Sunday, and this little service was begun for them while the factory was still in the state of excitement attending the search during many days for the body of the poor drowned boy. But an unexpected difficulty presented itself;

the

the men of the factory were afraid of each other, not with reference to the being seen attending religion, but to the fear of being suspected of doing so in order to curry favour. This and other circumstances made the service have a most unpromising beginning-but after much perseverance the thing grew; at last the little room was very inconveniently crowded; the service was then removed to the school-room, and it is now, I trust, a permanent part of the factory arrangements. The other matter, having a mournful origin, is the counting-house service at half-past eight. It arose like the cricket, in the cholera. Seven of us had been in the habit of going to the early daily service at Lambeth church, but when the cholera became very bad, as the way to and from the church was through a low part of Lambeth, in which it most raged, and passed the two churchyards in which cholera burials were going on at the rate of from forty to fifty a day, we got frightened, being all of us more or less unwell. We then, with the assistance of one of the neighbouring clergy, began the school-room service, and have continued it since the cholera has passed away, because some are able to attend there whose duties will not allow them going outside the factory.'

The engagement of a Chaplain led naturally to the provision of a Chapel, with Sunday Services for the more especial use of the workpeople with their families. Mr. Wilson found that the majority of the boys and of the parents attended no place of worship whatever, dawdled about the streets, went up the river, had their games of 'rounders' in Battersea-fields, or listened to some infidel 'spouter' on Kennington Common. Week-days of toil were succeeded by Sabbaths of sloth or profligacy. The Factory Chapel arrested this tide of evil; and a congregation has been formed of the men, the boys, the girls, the wives and mothers of those connected with the works, who take their part in the service of the Church with a reverence that might put to the blush many lounging, listless congregations that have had Christian privileges all their lives.

And how-many will ask-how did all this sort of operation affect the shareholders of the Candle Company? We gather that to this question a very satisfactory answer may be given. The good name of the Factory made it an object in the neighbourhood to get employment within it, and hence the managers had a choice of the labour in the market; the very games added to the skill and manual dexterity of the people; cricket exercised its influence on candles; the good cricketers acquired a fineness of hand which gave them increased facility in their work. But, moreover, the sympathy and confidence bestowed upon them inspired many a heart with an interest in the Factory distinct from and above what mere wages can create; and, above all, by degrees the manager found himself in possession of a set of intelligent

intelligent assistants, older or younger, on whom he could depend for a zealous participation in his views and plans towards the general amelioration of thoughts, sentiments, and habits. We do not wish to speak of that work as perfected which Mr. Wilson himself never alludes to as more than fairly begun and of good promise; but his own guarded statement may well encourage hope as to his people, while it must confirm and deepen our respect for himself.

'One can only generally say that the whole spirit of a Factory such as I trust ours is now in the prospect of becoming, will be different from one in which the giving and taking of wages is the only connexion between the proprietors and their people. One feels intuitively the moment the idea of two such different factories is presented to one's mind that the difference does by the very laws of human nature and religion ensure to the one much greater prosperity than to the other, although it may be impossible to trace out the details of this, and say such a hundred pounds spent upon the boys at such a time has brought back two hundred pounds before such a date afterwards. If I were forced to come to some particular proved instances of benefit to the business, I should take first the one which you witnessed the other night in coming down from the schools to the factory-a number of boys working so steadily and well at what a few years ago we should not have thought of trusting to any but men, it being work requiring much greater care and attention than can be reckoned upon from ordinary untrained factory boys. Yet even here the exact pecuniary benefit cannot be stated, for the boys whom you saw at work are not substitutes for men, but for machinery. It is the fact of our having at command cheap boy-labour which we dare trust, that enables us to make now by hand the better sort of candles which we used to make, like the other sorts, in the machines, and which, on account of the hardness of the material, when so made were never free from imperfection. The benefit will come to us, not in saving of wages (for had the choice been only between the men's dear labour and the machines, we should have stuck to the machines), but in increased trade, through the imperfection of the candles alluded to being removed.'

It is of no slight importance to see, as in this instance, the profitableness of taking a high view of duty and of acting up to it. The outlay, indeed, involved in the scheme we have described, and which was incurred simply as a matter of duty without reference to any temporal return, was large. From the period when the half-dozen boys studied their spelling-books amid the candle-boxes to the full development of the system, with the boys' schools, the girls' schools, the cricket-ground, the excursions, the chaplain, the chapel and chapel services, no less a sum than 32897. was spent. And this outlay, be it observed, came wholly from the pocket of the acting-manager, Mr. James Wilson, who had a

salary