m, capable of holding about 100 or
more, made in the place of two useless lumber-rooms. The making and
furnishing that room amounted to L.172. The school for some time held
to its first principles of self-government. All the instruction,
discipline, and management were supplied by the boys themselves; and
when a number of elder boys joined, a committee, appointed by
themselves, regulated the affairs of the community. However, this did
not last long. The hot young blood and immature young brain needed a
stronger curb than self-appointed committees could supply; and by a
general request, the school has since been worked by authority--this
authority itself guided by a general vote in many matters of choice
immediately concerning the scholars. In the following summer--we are
still in '48--a day-school was held in the room, to which the younger
boys who were wanted in the factory at uncertain times and for
indefinite periods, were sent when not employed--drafted from school
to work, and from work to school, as the necessities of the factory
required. The annual cost of this day-school is L.130; the total cost
from the commencement, L.327.

Amusements must now be provided. The first and most obvious were
tea-parties, the usual rewards to school-children, and often made very
tedious affairs by the enormous quantity of talk inflicted on them.
However, Mr Wilson managed better. To the first, many of the boys came
dirty and untidy; the second shewed a great improvement; the third,
one still greater; until now, most of the factory-boys assemble to
chapel, and other places where they ought to be decent, in plain suits
of black, which give them a neat and even gentlemanlike appearance:
yes, though the word applied to a set of factory-boys, candlemakers,
may make many of our readers smile. But for all that constitutes real
gentlemanlike feeling for order, obedience to authority, courtesy of
manner, the absence of rudeness, quarrelling, and other petty vices of
school-boys--these factory lads, taken from the very heart of a low
population, shine pre-eminently, or rather have shone, since Mr Wilson
has taken their educational training so much to heart. The first
tea-party was held on Easter-Monday, as a counterpoise to the
attractions of Greenwich and Camberwell fairs; and it succeeded in
that object, evidencing that vice is not that necessary ingredient in
the pleasures of the people which some people think.

In 1849, the cholera ca