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what words can describe the importance of this continuous teaching, in saving youth at the crisis of life from falling into deadly sin ! The occupation of the mind and thoughts by holy subjects prevents the pouring in of the tide of evil desires. The Catechism, religious instruction, and other parts of secular knowledge, the science of agriculture, history, and kindred subjects, become the employment of each evening, the bond by which the mind of childhood is connected with that of advancing age through the voice which was first known blended with the words of heaven on the ear of infancy, and are the means of retaining the interest, and engaging the thoughts, which Satan waits to occupy. Thus there will have been a distinct progress made, a continued development of the character, which will place the youth of eighteen far in advance of what he ever could have been five years younger. With system and arrangement the instruction can be carried on by the clergyman himself, and the effect would be not only the attainment of knowledge and the pre-occupation of the mind with good, but the general refinement of the character, the retaining of affections, and the preserving the true feelings of respect and obedience, so far better when voluntarily offered than when exacted against the will.

2. But another advantage will be gained by the working of the collegiate life. The habit of order

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and discipline in the common daily routine of life, will go far to elevate the tone, and ameliorate the condition of the poor. Few things are more painfully disorderly than a poor man’s table at meals ; it is rather a scramble than a meal; no attention paid to the recognition of God's bounty, no care for decency, cleanliness, or for supplying the wants of others before their own. Half the apparent miseries of the poor are from bad management, and that bad management arises more from want of the ideas of order, system, and arrangement, than aught else. It is a singular fact, but it is a fact, that though so depressed and straitened in circumstances, no people are less saving than the poor. They will often consume at once the food which, with a little contrivance, would have lasted for days; and very frequently heedless extravagance, and no notion of making the most of a little, will mark every meal. Now there is but little hope for an amendment, if the only school in which succeeding generations are educated in domestic economy is to be the already undisciplined domestic life of the parent of this day; at this rate there will be no end to the unfortunate heirlooms which will be delivered down from one century to another. The early days of the poor are, as I have said, usually the best in this respect; no children, or but two, the bright mahogany table, the well-cleaned crockery, and the highlypolished metal, the meal kept warm by the fire, and

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the young wife watching the youth of her first affections in his return from labour, speak of a better state of things; but even here no habit is generally formed which will enable this fairer ideal of domestic life to outlive the day, when five children have taken the place of the infant in arms, and the mahogany table has found its way in a hard winter to the pawn-broker's or the landlord's. By the help of some form of collegiate life for our youth, they might go forth into life with habits which would elevate their condition in this respect. At the table at college, by attention paid to grace before and after every meal, cleanliness in the utensils used, the common and simple forms of attention to each other observed, a strong habit would be formed, which would so mould the taste and inclination of the boys, that when they entered life they would not tolerate or suffer the slovenly habits which the men of our own generation are enduring at home, and when the day of poverty comes and an increased family, the attention to rule, cleanliness, and discipline, will go far to make up for the sorrows of a straitened meal.

There is no virtue in dirt. There may be points of picturesque beauty for the artist's pencil or even the poet's pen, in the broken crockery of the teatable, the grouping of children without form or order, the three-legged stool, and the drapery of filth ; but we cannot leave the poor in this condi

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tion for ideals such as these. But there is no excuse for food placed in all but disgusting shapes to the eye, and the children brought up to eat it in a manner far more akin to the animals below them than to the order of society above them; a little care and a very small expense, with a habit rightly formed, will go far towards correcting this. In fact, confusion and dirt receive too large a portion of undeserved and ill-placed pity. A plate a-piece may be provided for a trifle, and kept from being broken with no very irksome amount of attention; and that attention to cleanliness and order which so generally grace the simplest table in classes above this, might operate as easily upon that of the poor ; only form the habit while young, only give the tendency and taste while the taste is pliable, and the difficulty will be got over; and the collegiate life will achieve this. I am writing now from life, and have before me a number of youths taken a year since directly from the worst scenes of poverty, irregularity, and dirt, and the gradual influence of a gentler and more disciplined life upon them has been, that they are unconsciously to themselves gaining the quiet, retiring, simple manners at their meals, which would make them fit to mix with orders above them, and bid fair to regenerate the people of the coming day in the parish where they live.

There is no use in beginning at the surface to

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remedy social evils ; we must begin at the root ; there is no use in pitying the misery which is really resulting from ill management, and in giving a temporary relief to allay the pressing evil, which only, like food to a disease, increases it, and at the same time shrinking with disgust from the table and cottage of the poor, as the place where we would not for worlds taste food, and shew by manner that we would prefer to it a well-kept kennel; a line of conduct but too painfully prevalent even among the most humane and benevolent persons whose lives are devoted to their good. Let us begin at the root of the matter ;(purify the fountain, and form the taste and habits of a coming generation on a purer and higher mould, and not rest till we have so altered the domestic life of the poor man's home, that we could really sit down with ease and comfort at his table ourselves; then, and not till then, he will love and respect the orders above him, for he sees through condescension, and hates being made a machine. He cannot endure being made

a show on which to vent the mawkish sentimen! tality or ill-timed pity of a rich man, who all the

while would not deign to mix up with his daily life. Of course this latter is the easy course; but we have arrived at days which compel a deeper, truer treatment, and a more real and less artistic view of the poor. But this is what we want, and in their elevation of manners and condition, com

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