those of the little shovel-holders and pushers, boys who protect the men, by holding up shovels, from the heat of the furnaces when they are opened for the extraction of the metal, and who also open and shut the doors. The heat to which they are exposed is terrific, a thermometer held close to a boy's head rose immediately to 130°. The Assistant-Commissioner, standing near a boy whose position was permanent, afterwards found the crown and brim of his hat completely melted out of shape. At the mouth of another kiln, where the boys were constantly putting in articles to anneal, the mercury of a thermometer rose rapidly to the top, viz., 150o. The kilns in bottle works resemble arches in a wine cellar, and their heat was found to vary from 106° to 120°. They have no communication with either light or air, except the opening through which the bottles are carried in and taken out. The air is necessarily deficient in oxygen, and therefore very exhausting to work in; but the boys occupied in carrying bottles into and out of the kilns are, nevertheless, in constant motion, and the distance ran by each in a day's work amounts to many miles. At some bottle works in Yorkshire, the 'takers in' are said to run, on an average, from fifteen to sixteen miles each 'journey' or day's work. At one of these works the distance travelled by a boy only eleven years old, was measured, and was found to vary from thirteen and a half to seventeen miles a day, according to the number of bottles carried. In another, where ninety dozen of bottles were carried (only a 'fair journey '), the distance was found to be twenty miles. In the manufacture of common flint-glass bottles the distance ran by boys was found to be from sixteen to eighteen miles in six hours. The weight of the articles carried is moreover made practically heavier by being placed on the end of a long stick. A man,' said a workman, could not do a "taker in's" work; it would kill him.' Exhausting as the labour exacted from boys is, six hours is the utmost period of unbroken rest they are allowed, and in this is included the time spent in going home and returning, and for meals; leaving a very short period indeed for sleep, and none for recreation unless at the expense of sleep. Over-work is frequent. A little boy, ten years of age, had worked without cessation from seven on Friday morning until seven on Saturday evening, only lying down a little now and then on anything he could find. In one sheet-glass manufactory a boy has worked thirtysix hours without going to bed, and another had worked for sixty consecutive hours. Night work prevails more or less in all the glass-houses. It is impossible to conceive any system more calculated calculated to ruin the health of growing boys, and to destroy their constitutions; their appearance is described as unhealthy, their frames slight, and they all suffer more or less from languor, head-ache, and the effects of sudden chills after exposure to great heat; their feet are often sore and blistered, and they not unfrequently fall asleep over their work. When you come to work at nine at night,' said a little boy of thirteen to the Assistant-Commissioner, 'you do feel very sleepy, and have to sing to keep awake.' Under the conditions in which this manufacture is at present carried on, a very large proportion of the boys employed in the trade are necessarily entirely uneducated. The glass makers indeed, as a body, are said to be an untaught and intractable class. The medical evidence on the injury inflicted on young boys by the glass works is unusually emphatic, and a hope is expressed that the temptation to which worthless and improvident parents are exposed to discount' their children in this business will be put an end to. It might have been supposed that the rural districts of England would at least be exempt from the evils upon which it has been our painful task to comment, but agricultural labour is occasionally imposed upon children, to the serious injury of their constitutions, and under conditions peculiarly demoralising. In the course of the Poor Law inquiries which, in 1862, were instituted into the employment of women and children in agriculture, it was found that an organised system of labour called the 'gang system' existed in certain districts of Norfolk, Suffolk, Cambridgeshire, Huntingdonshire, and Lincolnshire. A farmer who wished to have a particular piece of work done, such as clearing land of stones or pulling turnips, applied to a gang-master, who contracted to do the job, supplying the necessary labour. This system still prevails; the farmer agrees with the gang-master and the gangmaster bargains with the labourers. If the work, as usually happens, is such as can be partly done by women and children, the gang is composed of persons of both sexes and of all ages. They work together superintended by an overseer. In parishes where there is an excess of population, and consequently much competition for employment, these gangs are easily collected, and the farmer gets his work done quickly and cheaply, and the gangmaster is generally able to make a considerable profit.* His object is of course to extract the greatest possible quantity of labour in a given time for the smallest possible amount of remuneration. A gang's man it is said often makes as much as 15s. a-day. A herd A herd of human beings of both sexes and all ages, often including very young children, is speedily got together, thus constituting an agricultural gang. The distance travelled before work is commenced is often five, six and seven miles, and the night is often passed by the party at a distance from home, huddled together in barns and outhouses, and without distinction of age or sex. In the formation of a gang the worst characters, male and female, are often collected from the neighbourhood, and the contaminating effect of a promiscuous assembly upon the young who form part of it may be readily conceived. Out of a hundred girls in a gang seventy have been known to have been previously demoralised. This system, we regret to say, has increased rather than diminished since public attention was first called to it. It prevails extensively over portions of Suffolk, Lincoln, Cambridgeshire and Huntingdonshire. The practice is condemned by magistrates, the clergy, and indeed by all but those who have a pecuniary interest in its maintenance; yet it continues. It would be superfluous to advert to the many other trades and employments which have engaged the attention of the Commission.* We have selected the most prominent in which overworking the young is practised to an extent cruelly to overtax their strength and to produce almost of necessity premature decline and decay. The worst instances of oppression, it is painful to state, are those in which children are overworked by their parents. It is therefore incumbent on the legislature to deprive those parents of the power of trafficking in the bodies and souls of their young. We well remember the stock arguments which were urged against the Factory Act, and we remember also by whom they were urged; but they were urged in vain. They have been renewed against every succeeding measure designed to protect the poor and helpless against the cupidity of those in whose power they lay. Such measures have, nevertheless, been sanctioned by Parliament and ratified by public opinion. The time has now arrived when a still further extension of the principle is imperatively required in the interests of humanity and civilization. Were the head of a family made punishable, by fine or Among these are lace and embroidery work in Ireland, hand-loom weaving and hosiery in Ireland, the paper tube manufacture, rolling-mills and forges, iron ship-building, letter foundries, the copper works of South Wales, hand-loom carpet making, the manufacture of hair seating, the tobacco manufacture, the bobbin manufacture, india-rubber works, and the paper manufacture. On all these the Commissioners have reported cruel abuses of the labour of children, and recommend immediate legislation. otherwise, otherwise, for any gross instance of overwork which might occur under his roof, the practice would certainly be checked. Any difficulty of obtaining evidence might be counteracted by the encouragement of informers, for the hours of work being necessarily open to the observation of neighbours, proof of the continuance of abuses would be readily obtainable and opinion would then speedily lead to their abandonment. The local authorities, and especially the Medical Officers of the Provincial Boards of Health, might be intrusted with a power of inspecting the smaller establishments and domestic workshops; and the continuance of the abuse would be improbable after the legislature shall have condemned it. If in the larger establishments the legal hours of work for children and young persons and females were specified and their infringement made a punishable offence, there can be but little doubt that the majority of employers would cheerfully conform to the provisions of the law. Experience has hitherto fully justified the wisdom of legislation. The Factory Act has contributed in a striking degree to the good feeling between masters and workmen, the latter of whom now speak of it as their true charter.' * The condition of the persons employed in the additional works which have recently come under inspection,' says the gentleman whose able Report we have previously had the pleasure of quoting, 'shows the absolute necessity for supervision, and has strengthened the opinion formed five-and-thirty years ago, that free labour (if so it may be termed), even in a free country, requires the strong arm of the law to protect it from the cupidity and ignorance of parents. Most of the workshops of this great commercial country have fallen into the inevitable track of competitive industry when unrestricted by law, namely, to cheapen prices by the employment of women and children in the first instance, and then to increase production by protracted hours of work, without regard to age, sex, or physical capability, or to the need of social requirements. Thus we have thousands of the working classes in a state of semi-barbarity; parents who appear to have little or no natural affection, fathers who are wholly sensual, mothers who are without domestic knowledge, children utterly ignorant, and without obedience, and masters who are not, perhaps, regardless, but who have never duly considered the consequences of congregations formed of such materials.' † * Report IV., p. xviii. † Report of Mr. Baker, Inspector of Factories, for 1865. Vol. 119.-No. 238. 2 D ART. ART. IV.-1. Lectures on the Science of Language, delivered at the Royal Institution of Great Britain in April, May, and June, 1861. By Max Muller, M.A. Fourth Edition. London, 1864. 2. Lectures on the Science of Language, delivered at the Royal Institution of Great Britain in February, March, April, and May, 1863. By Max Müller, M.A. Second Series. London, 1864. 3. A Dictionary of English Etymology. By Hensleigh Wedg wood, M.A. (Vols. I. and II., Vol. III. Part 1.) London, 1859-65. 4. Chapters on Language. By the Rev. Frederic W. Farrar, M.A. London, 1865. WHE For HEN we survey the modern science of Comparative Philology, and the position of our English scholars in it, it is by no means pleasant to find ourselves here much worse placed than in many other fields of art and science. Towards the end of the last century we had actually grasped the clue which was to lead to the great philological discoveries of the present; but it was for the most part by Continental explorers, especially by Germans, that this clue was followed up. years we not only did not teach, we were backward even in learning: but of late we have happily begun to move again, and at last seem to have started with a fair hope of making the last days of the nineteenth century redeem the deficiencies of the first. English students have been working in particular depart ments of the science with much energy and some success, and moreover we have now that great power in producing and encouraging science, an educated public strongly interested in the study of Language, and to a large extent both able and willing to hear all sides of an argument, trusting to broad common sense in shaping their opinions according to the evidence laid before them. In having a public of this kind, we are probably more fortunate than any other country in Europe, and, having it, we are bound to make the most of it. It is much better that such interest should flow gradually through society, raising the whole intellectual level of the country, and thus reacting beneficially upon the progress of science, than that, as in Germany, the learned class should be, like the noble class, so unhappily wanting in intermediate members to connect it with the main body of the people. The public interest in Philological discovery had for some years been gradually widening and deepening in England, when the |