dant may either plead his own cause, or employ a schoolfellow as counsel, which he sometimes does. The judge takes notes of the evidence, to assist him in delivering his charge to the jury; in determining the sentence he is guided by the regulations enacted by the committee; which affix punishments varying with the magnitude of the offence and the age of the defendant, but invest the judge with the power of increasing or diminishing the penalty. to the extent of one-fourth. The penalties appointed by the judge are entered in a book by the sheriff, and a copy of the sentence is laid before the master for his signature, when he can, if he please, exercise his power of mitigation or pardon. The fines are paid in open court immediately after the ratification of the sentence; otherwise the defendant is imprisoned. Any one who has committed an offence may, with the permission of a teacher, escape the shame of a public trial, by undergoing the greatest possible punishment that he could suffer from the sentence of the judge. A register is kept of all who have been convicted before the court of justice, and of those who have paid the increased fines in order to escape trial. Some boys are acutely sensible of the disgrace of appearing in this book; and in order to make this very proper feeling a spur to moral improvement, it has been thought advisable to allow any one, whose name, at the last arrangement according to good behaviour (on a system to be explained hereafter), shall have stood above a certain number, to move the court to order the erasure of his name from the criminal register. The boy in this case is obliged to give notice of his intention to the attorney-general, and, to succeed, he must prove to the satisfaction of a jury, that his conduct for a long time past has been exemplary. This has been done in some instances. The offences which come before the court of justice are, principally, leaving the school before the appointed exercises are completed and examined, going beyond the school boundaries, and falsehood. Petty acts of dishonesty have sometimes been the subjects of legal investigation; but these, we are happy to state, occur very rarely indeed. When a case of prevarication comes before the court, the offender is likely to be severely dealt with, for the juries have hitherto shown a decided aversion to every kind of deception; and a quibble is, perhaps, punished more rigorously than a direct falsehood. Any one who shall think himself aggrieved by a decision of the magistrate, a teacher, or of the court of justice, may appeal to the committee. Two instances only have occurred of appeals from the court of justice, both of which were brought by the attorney-general, against verdicts of acquittal; and upon each occasion the committee reversed the decision of the inferior court. Neither of these cases was of that clear and undoubted nature which would authorize a charge of partiality against the jury; moreover, in each instance, evidence was brought before the committee which had not been heard below. Appeals against the decisions of the teachers and magistrate have been frequently made. The committees have generally ratified the former decisions; and when they have not, (with a few exceptions only), they have acted in conformity with the opinions of the teachers as a body. We can remember only two instances in which that has not been the case; even here all that was done was to reduce the penalties, not to remit them altogether; and though it was the opinion of the teachers that in these instances the committees were actuated in some measure by party feeling, we cannot be certain that such was the fact, because it is not impossible that the teachers themselves might be influenced by a sentiment of esprit du corps in favour of the acts of an individual of their own body. It has lately been the etiquette, when any case of appeal cencerning a teacher comes before the committee, to leave the decision entirely with the boys; the only teacher who is in the habit of attending the meetings declining to vote on the question. When any boy above the age of thirteen leaves the school, his character becomes the subject of judicial consideration; a report thereon is drawn up, and laid before the general committee by a sub-committee appointed for the purpose. In this report, the boy's merits and demerits are impartially stated; his improvement while at school, his rank and general character, and the offices of trust he may have served, are here recorded. On the other hand, the criminal register is consulted, and should his name be found therein, the fact is now brought forward against him. Offences committed long ago, however, are not unkindly dwelt upon; and moral improvement is always recorded with pleasure. These reports are entered in a book, and read to the whole school. If any boy desire a copy of his character, he is furnished with one by the secretary. * Such Such is the organization of the system of government in detail. It struck us at first as exceedingly complicated, farcical, and boyish. And if we had not been before assured on high authority, that "it works admirably in practice," we should have said without hesitation, that it could never be executed at all, or at best, at an expense of most of the time and attention of the scholars. But the operation of the system cannot be fully understood in the abstract; and we deem one successful experiment better evidence of its practicability than all the speculations which could be bestowed upon it. experiment has been made; and our scepticism is so far overcome by the favourable result as to leave a belief, that some modification of the system, by which the older pupils may be admitted to a share in the details of government, would be an improvement in the plans of our larger and higher schools;-because such an arrangement would relieve the governors and teachers of by far the most difficult and perplexing part of their duty; and because it would remove the impression, which always exists in a community of pupils, that they are the subjects of an arbitrary power, a tyranny to which they must either quietly submit, or from which they must escape by violence or intrigue. * See Edinburgh Review, No. LXXXII. Wherever a large number of pupils are brought together, there we may always expect an esprit du corps, which, unless it be very diverted, will naturally be arrayed against the power which restrains or controls it. This impatience of control, and this spirit of opposition, are peculiarly strong in youth; and they are imparted by sympathy from one to another with electrical rapidity. A leading and essential point, therefore, in any plan for the government of boys in large numbers, must be to remove, as far as possible, the causes which excite, and the occasions which bring out, this spirit of opposition; and if this point be not by some means and in some good degree gained, opposition will always exist, and concert and combination will give it energy and direction. Vigilance and power may restrain it, but it still exists. It is a force too elastic to be broken or crushed, and every increase of weight causes a double reaction. The system just quoted has for its object, to relieve the masters and instructers from the trouble of imposing these odious restraints, and the pupils from the trouble of feeling them; and at the same time to secure all the order necessary for the attainment of the objects of the institution. Restraints imposed by the constitution of the school, and punishments inflicted by an executive from their own body, will be felt as a much less evil, than when imposed by superiors, who have fewer sympathies with them, and who take the whole government into their own hands, and make, interpret, and execute their laws; wisely, perhaps, for every purpose but that for which they are designedviz. to produce good dispositions, and promote the greatest moral and intellectual improvement of the community of pupils. Rank, we are assured by our author, is an object of great ambition in the school, and it is conferred according to moral and intellectual merit. As we have before stated, it is an object with us to make rank as important in the eyes of the boys as possible. The weekly arrangement determines for a time the precedence of the boys. With a few exceptions, which will be stated shortly, they sit according to it at their meals: when presenting their exercises to a teacher for examination, superiority in rank gives them a prior claim to his attention; and it has been seen, that the higher a boy ranks, the more influence he acquires in the election of the committee, and, consequently, the greater is his control in the affairs of the school. There are other motives which render this rank desirable, but is not necessary to enumerate all. They have two species of circulating media in the establishment, one called penal marks, and another premial marks. These, somewhat unlike our vulgar circulating medium, represent this same moral and mental merit; and not what the pupils possess of the good things of this world. The whole system of rewards and punishments consists almost exclusively in giving or withholding these two species of marks or "counters." The following is our author's description of one of them. Our rewards are chiefly conferred by the distribution of certain counters, which the boys obtain by superiority in the classes, by filling certain offices, and by various kinds of voluntary labour. In the forfeiture of these counters our punishments chiefly consist; hence the pieces are called penal marks. Every boy in the school devotes such part of his play-hours as he may think proper to the obtaining of these marks. The product of almost any kind of labour or study is received, provided it is presented in a complete state, and is tolerably well executed. As each boy, for this purpose, is at liberty to employ himself in the way he shall think proper, he of course engages in those pursuits which are most consonant with his taste. * * * The penalties are entered at the time they are incurred in a book which is kept for the purpose; and at an appointed hour in each day the boys are expected to pay certain teachers, who are in readiness to receive them, all the penalties which may have been registered against them on the preceding day: those, however, of the younger boys are lessened by subtracting a sixth for every year which the age is under eleven. At the same time other teachers are occupied in giving the rewards for voluntary labour. The names of those boys who cannot pay their fines are entered on a list (called the defaulters' list), which is kept by the sheriff, the penalties being doubled. Those who remain on this list are confined to the school-room, except at meal-times, and during one half hour in each day which is allowed for exercise: they are also obliged to rise at an hour earlier than the other boys in the morning; and at the next holiday, should they be still upon this list, provided their names have not been entered within the preceding twenty-four hours, the sheriff has the power of confining them separately in the dark, for a time proportionate to the amount of their debts. The other species of counters differs from the one just described, both in the kind of merit which it represents, and the purposes to which it may be applied. Besides the counters already mentioned, rewards of another description are given, which we call premial marks: these can only be obtained by productions of the very best quality, and, unlike the penal marks, are strictly personal; that is, they cannot be transferred from one boy to another with a certain number of them, a boy may purchase for himself an additional holiday, which can be obtained by no other means; and in the payment of penalties, they may be commuted at an established rate for penal marks. To prevent unnecessary interference in the arrangements of the school, the purchase of holiday with premial marks is confined to a certain afternoon in each week, when any one who is able may obtain his liberty. But an inducement to save their premial marks is offered to the boys by making them the means of procuring rank. Thus once and sometimes twice in every half year, (according to the number of weeks from vacation to vacation), the first place is put up to auction, and given to the boy who is willing to sacrifice for it the greatest number of premial marks: the second place is then sold in the same manner, and so on. By these means the possession of premial marks is made to bear upon the determination of the prizes; and so powerful is the motive thus created, that we find, on an examination of the accounts, that a boy of fourteen, now in the school, although constantly in the possession of marks amply sufficient to obtain a holiday per week, has bought but three quarters of a day's relaxation during the whole of the last year. The same boy, at a late arrangement, purchased his place on the list by a sacrifice of marks, sufficient to have obtained for him twenty-six half days' exemption from the labour and confinement of the school. These are the essential principles of all that is peculiar to the government of the Hazelwood School. The division of the scholars into classes, and the minor regulations for the preservation of order, present nothing new. There is considerable mechanical ceremony in going through the manœuvres of a day; but all this is common in principle, if not in form, with the system of Mr Lancaster; and we shall not go into a more particular account of it. The volume contains our author's defence of his own system of government, and a sketch of the principles of instruction he has adopted. These make more than half the volume, and constitute by far the most valuable part of it; although they are less peculiar than the part we have already examined. These, as well as the moral influence of the education received at school, we must reserve for some future number. MISCELLANY. HYDE PARK-STATUE IN HONOUR OF WELLINGTON-KENSINGTON GARDENS-CHELSEA HOSPITAL. A LEAF FROM THE JOURNAL OF A TRAVELLER IN ENGLAND. April 18th, 18-. Or all the crowds of London, the most numerous and various is that which is poured forth from this great metropolis into Hyde Park, between one and four o'clock of a pleasant Sunday. We may learn the numerical population of London in our closets, but no one can have a full and just conception of its immensity without taking the view, which a few minutes walk procured me to |