there, but these things taken together are almost powerless with the great mass which remains unaffected.  The evil for the most part lies hidden, yet one sometimes lights upon a case which shows that the results of our own neglect of the children may be such as cannot be placed on paper for general reading.  For instance, on last August Bank Holiday I was on Hampstead Heath.  The East Heath was crowded with a noisy, turbulent, good-tempered mob, enjoying, as a London crowd always does, the mere presence of a multitude.  There was a little rough horse-play and the exchange of favourite witticisms, and there was some preaching and a great singing of irreverent parodies; there was little drunkenness and little bad behaviour except for half a dozen troops or companies of girls.  They were quite young, none of them apparently over fifteen or sixteen.  They were running about together, not courting the company of the boys, but contented with their own society, and loudly talking and shouting as they ran among the swings and merry-go-rounds and other attractions of the fair.  I may safely aver that language more vile and depraved, revealing knowledge and thoughts more vile and depraved, I have never heard from any grown men or women in the worst part of the town.  At mere profanity, of course, these girls would be easily defeated by men, but not in absolute vileness.  The quiet working men among whom they ran looked on in amazement and disgust; they had never heard anything in all their lives to equal the abomination of these girls’ language.  Now, they were girls who had all, I suppose, passed the third or fourth standard.  At thirteen they had gone into the workshop and the street.  Of all the various contrivances to influence the young not one had as yet caught hold of them; the kerbstone and the pavements of the street were their schools; as for their conversation, it had in this short time developed to a vileness so amazing.  What refining influence, what trace of good manners, what desire for better things, what self-restraint, respect, or government, was left in the minds of these girls as a part of their education?  As one of the bystanders, himself of the working class, said to me, ‘God help their husbands!’ Yes, poverty has many stings; but there can be none sharper than the necessity of marrying one of these poor neglected creatures.

We do not, therefore, only leave the children without education; we also leave them, at the most important age, I suppose, of any namely—­the age of early adolescence—­without guidance or supervision.  How should we like our own girls left free to run about the streets at thirteen years of age?  Between the ages of thirteen and eighteen—­how can we ever forget this time?—­there falls upon boy and girl alike a strange and subtle change.  It is a time when the brain is full of strange new imaginings, when the thoughts go vaguely forth to unknown splendours; when the continuity of self is broken, and the lad of to-day is different from him of yesterday;