their vicious courses.  This asylum has been instrumental in affording assistance to a considerable number of distressed youths, who, but for this seasonable aid, must have resorted to criminal practices for support.  On admission into this establishment, the boys are instructed in moral and religious duty, subjected to habits of order and industry, and after a time are placed in situations which afford a reasonable prospect of their becoming honest and useful members of society.  To extend these objects, and to render its exertions more widely beneficial, the society solicits the aid of public benevolence.  Its expenses are unavoidably serious, and its funds are at present very low; but it is trusted that pecuniary support will not be withheld, when it is considered, that on the liberality with which this appeal is answered, depends, in a great measure, the success of the society’s objects—­the reformation of the vicious, and the prevention of crime.”]

That this remedy is effectual, experience has taught me and many others; and experience is a guide on whom we may safely rely.  It has shown me that by taking children at an early age out of the reach of contamination in the streets, and removing them in a great measure from the no less baneful influence of evil example at home, we may lay such a foundation of virtue, as is not likely to be shaken.  Nor do I think it difficult to show the reason of this.  It is confessed on all hands that our first impressions are the most powerful, both as to their immediate effects and future influence; that they not only form the character of our childhood, but that of our maturer years.  As the mind of a child expands, it searches for new objects of employment or gratification; and this is the time when the young fall an easy prey to those who make a business of entrapping them into the paths of dishonesty, and then of urging them to crimes of deeper dye.  What, then, but a most salutary result can ensue from placing a child in a situation, where its first impressions will be those of the beauty of goodness,—­where its first feelings of happiness will consist in the receiving and cherishing kind ness towards its little neighbours?  In after years, and in schools for older children, it is reckoned an unavoidable evil, that they should be congregated together in numbers; not so in the infant school; it is there made use of as a means of developing and exercising those kindly feelings, which must conduce to the individual and general comfort, not only there, but in society generally.  It is not merely by instructing them in maxims of honesty that we seek to provide against the evil; but by the surer way of exciting that feeling of love towards each other—­towards every one—­which, when found in activity, must not only prevent dishonesty, but every other species of selfishness.

Consider the difference of the cases.  In the one case we behold a child associated, in happy communion, with a society—­a little world—­of its own age and feelings,—­continually proving the possibility of giving and imparting happiness by receiving and exercising kindness to its companions—­secured from every danger—­supplied with a constant variety of amusement, which is at the same time instruction; and all this under the care of a master or mistress; acting the part, not of a petulant school-dame, or a stern pedagogue, but of a kind and judicious parent.