best he could; and, added to all this, he joined in their sports. What wonder that they loved him, or that when he died,* and his death was sudden, at the age of seventy-two, the poor children, who then formed his class, wept, and some of them fainted on hearing the news.

No very long interval elapsed between the death of John Pounds, and the introduction into Aberdeen of a Ragged School, upon a much larger scale. The ceaseless action and reaction of ignorance, idleness, and misery upon crime, seems to have struck Sheriff Watson, as it had already struck the Portsmouth shoemaker; a society was formed to supply the means of affording instruction to all the vagrant children of the city, and the plan was carried into execution with partial success. Still something was felt to be wanting, and it was at length suggested that in addition to the education given to the children, they should be supplied with food and industrial occupation. Great was the outcry with which this proposition was at first received. "What? do you mean to treat thus all the young beggars in Aberdeen? Who ever heard of such a thing?" But the question was answered by the opening

* In 1839.

of the school upon this footing in October, 1841. A few friends favourable to the scheme had advanced £100, and they began with twenty scholars, and by March in the next year, the numbers had mounted to sixty.

This good beginning was followed up after a time on a larger scale, and the police were instructed by the magistrates to convey every child found begging in the streets, to a large room which also served as a soup kitchen; and thither on the 19th of May 1845, seventy-five children, boys and girls were taken. The scene which ensued was almost indescribable : -confusion, uproar, quarrelling, fighting, and language of the most horrible kind, were to be encountered and vanquished. The task was a hard one, but the committee before the even

* " It was fitting" to use Sheriff Watson's own words, "that such a meeting should be constituted by an appeal to our Universal Parent, and the messenger of the Gospel prayed that He would send down His light and His truth to enlighten and direct; that He who had said suffer little children to come unto me,' would of these little ones make children of the kingdom of heaven; that the Father of the fatherless, and the God of the needy, and of those who had none to help them, would adopt them into His family, and make them joint heirs with Christ. The language and the accent of prayer have

ing succeeded in establishing something like order. The children were then told that this place was open for them to return to daily, and they were invited for the morrow, but were at the same time told that whether they did so or not, they would no longer be allowed to beg, since food no less than instruction was offered to them there. The next day the greater portion returned; funds flowed in for the support of the undertaking; the working classes took a lively interest in it, and whilst the wealthier inhabitants of Aberdeen contributed during the year about £150 towards carrying it on, the working classes subscribed no less than £250. The report of the committee of managers states as the most gratifying result of this happy combination of all classes for each other's welfare, "that whereas a few years since there were 320

always a soothing and softening effect, and these rude Arabs of the city, who would have resisted oppression however severe, and authority however legitimate, were subdued by the earnest appeal to the Fountain of mercy on their behalf; their hands which had hitherto kept hold of each other, fell down by their sides; their eyes which had been suspiciously directed to the opposite party, were turned towards the ground; and they gradually assumed the attitude of humility and devotion."

children in the town, and 328 in the county of Aberdeen who, impelled by their own or their parents' necessities to cater for their immediate wants, prowled about the streets, and roved far and wide through the country, cheating and stealing their daily avocation, now a begging child is rarely to be seen, and juvenile crime is comparatively unknown."

The example being set, it was ere long followed up by other benevolent individuals, and in 1844 a society, under the title of The Ragged School Union, was formed for the purpose of forwarding the good work, and assisting with pecuniary aid where the funds were inadequate.*

*The first impulse to this movement in London was probably given by a Society formed as long ago as 1750, under the title of " the Society for Promoting Religious Knowledge among the Poor." Its constitution was similar to that of the City Mission (founded in 1835) and Ragged School Union, one rule being "That the members shall be selected from Christians of various denominations." Porteus, bishop of London, Romaine, John Newton, Thornton, Wilberforce, Rowland Hill, were among the names of those who joined this society. From this sprang the London Missionary Society, the Religious Tract Society, the Bible Society, and the London Sunday School Society, and it was among the Sunday School Society Teachers and City Missionaries that the plan of Ragged Schools was mainly matured.

Unfortunately, the very circumstance which made these schools most desirable, excited a prejudice against them, and checked the current of charitable liberality. Thieves and vagabonds were here received, kindly treated, and instructed; they had thus a better chance than the children of honest labourers, whom no one sought out; it was offering a premium to vice.' Many very worthy people insisted that 'misery is the appointed punishment of sin, and that to attempt to rescue these children from the state into which their own and their parents' misdeeds had brought them, was detrimental to society by confounding the distinctions of right and wrong, lessening the divinely appointed penalty of crime, and thus weakening the deterring

The first school so designated appears to have been that in Field Lane, but several isolated schools on that principle had been set going at different times, both in London and elsewhere, long before the term Rugged Schools was adopted. Among these the name of Mrs. Fletcher ought to be mentioned, who gathered out of the streets at Laytonstone thirty or forty poor houseless, neglected children, taught and fed them; and of Mr. Thomas Cranfield, who died in 1838, who had hired a room, and opened a Ragged School. Mr. Robert Stacey first conferred with Lord Ashley on the subject in 1844, and assisted in forming the Ragged School Union.