meritorious and salutary. And we make a peasant of the Bouqueval
farm to say:

"It is humane and charitable not to make the wicked desperate,
but it is also requisite that the good should not be without
hope. If a stout, sturdy, honest fellow, desirous of doing well,
and of learning all he can, were to present himself at the farm
for young ex-thieves, they would say to him, 'My lad, haven't you
stolen some trifle, or been somewhat dissolute?' 'No!' 'Well,
then, this is no place for you.'"

This discordance of things had struck minds much superior to our
own, and, thanks to them, what we considered as an utopianism was
realised. Under the superintendence of one of the most
distinguished and most honourable men of the age, M. le Comte
Portalis, and under the able direction of a real philanthropist
with a generous heart and an enlightened and practical mind, M.
Allier, a society has been established for the purpose of
succouring poor and honest persons of the Department of the
Seine, and of employing them in agricultural colonies. This
single and sole result is sufficient to affirm the moral idea of
our work. We are very proud and very happy to have been met in
the midst of our ideas, our wishes, and our hopes by the founders
of this new work of charity; for we are one of the most obscure,
but most convinced, propagators of these two great truths,--that
it is the duty of society to prevent evil, and to encourage and
recompense good, as much as in it lies.

Whilst we are speaking of this new work of charity, whose just
and moral idea ought to have a salutary and fruitful result, let
us hope that its founders will perchance think of supplying
another vacancy, by extending hereafter their tutelary patronage,
or, at least, their solicitude, over young children whose fathers
have been executed, or condemned to an infamous sentence
involving civil death, and who, we will repeat, are made orphans
by the act and operation of the law. Such of these unfortunate
children as shall be already worthy of interest from their
wholesome tendencies and their misery will still more deserve
particular notice, in consequence of their painful, difficult,
and dangerous position. Let us add: The family of a condemned
criminal, almost always victims of cruel repulses, apply in vain
for labour, and are compelled, in order to escape universal
reprobation, to fly from