and good humoured conversation with them, to make the period of study pleasant. Nothing is a more general taste than that of music, and in the B- Street School it has been found very advantageous to set songs of an innocent or moral description to known and easy tunes, which the boys could learn and sing for their own entertainment and that of their companions,* besides the hymns taught them. Two or three concerts of this kind, in which the boys and teachers were the sole performers, have been held, and with the greatest success; some bread and butter or pudding concluding the entertainment to the satisfaction of all.

This is as it should be: the enjoyment of right doing should be sensibly felt to strengthen

* At the time when all the world was mad after Hullah's plan of teaching vocal music, a class of this kind was established at a small country town near some friends of the writer. One night having strolled within reach of a little hedge ale-house, they saw four labouring men come and seat themselves on the bench. They immediately began a glee which they sang very tolerably, and after spending about an hour in this way, they rose and departed, having had one pot of beer between them. How great an improvement was this on the usual style of visits to public houses! Unfortunately the Hullah class was discontinued.

the young resolution, and as vocal music is the most attractive, as well as unattended with any expense, it presents itself at once as one of the easiest and best modes of supplying the great desideratum of innocent amusement. The slight knowledge of the science which is requisite to singing in parts might be communicated with ease the nature of a third, fifth, and octave, is easily understood, and the very exercise of thus forming the common chord by means of different voices, is amusing: the ear once formed to these intervals would very soon become acquainted with the others, and the few chords which enter into ordinary compositions would be easily acquired. The knowledge of music thus given would not be great, but these are the first steps of music as a science; and if any among the children thus taught the rudiments, should choose in after years to go further, he has at any rate a foundation laid for instrumental no less than vocal performance.

The great fault of the usual teaching in schools is that it is altogether empirical, and therefore tiresome; were the first steps of all knowledge made rational, and therefore interesting to the scholar, we should generally find less disinclination to learning of any kind; for the mind

would be occupied, and might find subjects for after thought in the explanations given. It is so difficult to break through long established habits, that had not the Ragged School system been a thing entirely sui generis, the great problem as to how instruction can be made most available, would probably never have been so fairly put and solved; and even now there is danger that former habits and prejudices may sometimes tempt very worthy persons into thinking that a greater degree of severity would be both more effectual and more godly. I think I have proved from the constitution of man's nature that it is not likely to be more effectual; a few words more may be said as to its godliness.

There is an idea very prevalent that the path of duty is a rugged and a painful one, and those who tread it are led to expect that their reward is to be wholly in another state of being, and that here they must embrace suffering as their portion. We can hardly imagine that a WISE GOD wishing to induce his creatures to arrive at that future happiness, would allow the difficulties in the way of it to be so great, that few would have physical courage to surmount them; still less can we suppose that a GOOD GOD would thus narrow the numbers so fearfully, of those

who should attain to blessedness: and when we find any of the notions which we have received, appear to contradict the known nature of God, it is a sufficient reason for revising them. Christ has said that his yoke was easy and his burthen light; we can hardly, in the face of that declaration, suppose that the Christian religion proscribes the comforts and pleasures of life. It then becomes our duty to consider whether the path of duty be so rugged as it is represented; and whether, if we can smooth it in any way, we are not working the will of God by thus making his paths strait and easy to walk in. When we pray daily that His will shall be done on earth as it is in heaven, if there be sense in words, it means that it shall be willingly, lovingly, and cheerfully done;—that the doing it shall be pleasure; the having done it, happiness. Let us then remember the nature it has been His pleasure to give us; a mixture of the animal and the spiritual:-the emotions belonging to the animal, the enduring will to the spiritual; and we shall see that in order to bring the whole man to God, we must interest the pleasurable emotions in the business as well as the will. The first will be awakened by kindness, the second influenced by rational convic

tion. But the emotions are naturally transitory, and however a wretched child may be led to abandon his evil ways at first by kindness, if he have no rational expectation that a better course will bring him real enjoyment, when the personal influence ceases, the inducement to well doing ceases also. It becomes important then to point out God's promise, that if we will seek spiritual good, all the rest shall be added; to show that the path of duty is also the path of happiness; and by giving a foretaste of greater enjoyment, to show that there is something worth striving for. It is upon this plan that the teachers of the B- Street School have proceeded, and their complete success is such as, from the principles above laid down, was to be expected.

Although I have mentioned music as one of the amusements which almost all are alive to, there are others for which a taste might be awakened of a no less ennobling nature. Drawing especially is a thing in which many children. find pleasure, and which also by means of a black board and chalk may be practised at very small expense. The accuracy of eye which even a slight knowledge of this art engenders, is essentially useful in every sort of mechanical ope