been a most attentive, well-conducted girl, and when I missed her from School, I feared she was ill. She seemed quite alarmed when I entered, but was quickly reassured by the evicent satisfaction it gave me to see her success. This girl had been reduced to a state of the deepest distress, and had come to the School from the Fever Hospital. Another supposed truant, whom I accosted one day in the street, informed me that she was then herself paying £2 10s Od weekly wages. The same thing occurred with the shirt trade. Agents came from England and cut out shirts, which they gave at the counter to those who had been trained at our Schools, and thus prepared to take work on their own responsibility. Without the operation of Industrial Schools they could never have acquired so much knowledge; they were brought to it gradually, and we were all the while enabled to pay the learner at every stage, in consequence of the immense quantity of work to be executed.

After a few days, a child could hem, and was perfected so far; her mother often accompanied her, and was taught to finish; while a third or fourth of the same family was taught the other parts the advantages of centralisation and unity becoming manifest. A child who had perhaps given up embroidery or sewed muslin work, hopeless of being able to remain long enough at it to make it really productive, was easily brought to apply the knowledge she had acquired to the button hole work of a shirt, while the good veiner became at once a good finisher of fronts. I have already proved to you that one manufacture produced another. The same embroidery enabled us to accept an order for cloth waistcoats, by which our children continued for several months to earn from six to eight shillings a week. The very designs from which the patterns were formed, were also of home manufacture. I got them done by the pupils of the Christian Brothers' drawing schools.

Why do I detail all these particulars? just to encourage those who listen to my pleadings for the establishment of these schools. If so much was actually accomplished in the aidst of innumerable obstacles arising from want of money, of knowledge, and of sufficient help, what might not be hoped if Reformatory Establishments dotted all over the country were given the means of causing the blessings of industry to be spread throughout the land.

But I have exceeded all bounds in the length of this abridge

ment. Be thankful that you have at last come to the end. Tempt me no more to write letters. You might cause me to become what I so much deprecate-a mere theorist. We have a struggling school to mind just at this moment. As a consequence of the late American failures, the work is wretchedly paid; and at such a crisis there is nothing left for us to do but to put on a higher pressure of kindliness and sympathy by visiting our children more frequently, talking over their hopes and concerns, and looking after the truants. In this way alone can we endeavour to keep the school together until some help shall be providentially sent us. If you think these details too long, select what may be useful, and cut away the rest. I know nothing of the art of writing, and may only weary the reader I would fain interest. Use therefore your own discretion on the matter, and be sure that whatever you decide on will satisfy

Richmond,

March 6th, 1858.

Yours, dear Sir,
Very sincerely

E. W.

This letter, from the pen of a lady whose former communications to THE IRISH QUARTERLY REVIEW have attracted the notice of the most influential portion of the English and Irish Press, and which have loaded our table with private letters, in approval of, or requesting further information from the writer, appears to us of the vastest importance. It would be important at any period, but just at this particular time, when a Reformatory Schools' Bill for Ireland is on the point of being laid before the Legislature, its importance and value are a hundred fold increased.

Reformatory Schools are good things, and are needed, most pressingly required, in Ireland, but it must must also be recollected that there is a vast mass of floating, undeveloped crime, that crime which always lurks under want, and which the Industrial School, rather thau the Reformatory, is calculated, to meet. It must always be kept clearly in mind that the little, idle, wandering, workless, ignorant "loafing" child of to-day may become the predatory" city arab," the "home heathen," of to-morrow. All who are acquainted with the philosophy of the Reformatory question know this, and thus it comes to pass, that they who do know the question most thoroughly are those who desire most ardently to see Industrial Schools established on safe aud sure principles throughout every portion of these kingdoms. It is a Christian and a wise desire, because it is founded on that unquestionable truth which the Aberdeen Industrial Schools take for their motto-PREVENTION IS BETTER THAN CURE.

We are ardently anxious for a Reformatory Schools' act for this country, but if that act be unaccompanied by an extension of Dunlop's Act, modified to suit the peculiar requirements of Ireland, the work will be, in our mind, but half accomplished,

We have, doubtless, numbers of juvenile criminals, but we have a still more numerous body of juvenile idlers. Our Poor Houses train up girls who must live idle in the Poor House, and starve in the world, or become criminal to obtain a gaol maintenance, or sinful to flaunt in the wretched tawdriness of the prostitute. They are helpless to obtain an honest living, they are a disgrace to the legislation which legalizes a system as unnatural in management as it is unchristian and unwise in design.

Thus are the Poor-House-reared girls: change the sex, and every evil is but more strongly, and more dangerously, and more patently developed.

If, however, a sound, well designed, and carefully carried out

system of industrial training were adopted, a system teaching self-reliance, and self-respect, this coupled with Reformatory Schools, would make our now" famishing and dangerous" classes of juveniles one of, as Mary Carpenter tenderly and thoughtfully calls them, "little sinners," and something more like the little ones amongst whom our Saviour sat, and whom he said we should resemble if we hoped to be his friends.

IRISH QUARTERLY REVIEW.

No. XXIX.-APRIL, 1858.

ART I.-ODD PHASES IN LITERATURE.

* SIXTH PAPER.

1. Typographia, or the Printers' Instructor, including an account of the origin of Printing, with Biographical Notices of the Printers of England from Carton to the close of the Sixteenth Century. By J. Johnson, Printer. London: Longman and Co., 1824.

2. Origines de l'Imprimerie de Paris. Par J. Chevillier, Paris, 1694.

3. Annales Typographica. Norimbergo: 1793.

4. Essai sur les Livres dans l'Antiquité. Par H. Gérand. Paris: 1840.

PRICES OF BOOKS IN ANCIENT TIMES AND IN THE MIDDLE AGES.-"The ancients apprise us, according to Aulus-Gellius, that Plato, though possessed of a very moderate patrimony, purchased for 10,000 deniers (£400) the three books of the Pythagorean Philolaus, and from which Plato is said to have derived the greater part of his Timaeus. Some authors assert that this sum was given him by his friend Dionysius of Syracuse. It is also related that Aristotle, after the death of Speusippus, payed three attic talents (£659) for some books composed by this philosopher. This sum, according to the value of the Roman money, was about 72,000 sesterces. Timon, in his three books of satires, gives vent to his malignity; apostrophizes Plato, whom he tells us was very poor, in consequence of hav

For the other papers of this series see IRISH QUARTERLY REVIEW, Vol. VI., No. 23, p. 439. No. 24, p. 647. Vol. VII., No. 25, p. 1. No. 26, p. 267. No. 27 p. 629.

NO. XXIX., VOL. VIII.

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