e ground, accompanied by their two eldest
boys in sailors' costume. The prizes were distributed in the Royal
Albert Hall. The Princess went to the Royal box, but the Royal princes
went with their father to the dais, where they were welcomed with great
clapping of hands, by the thousands of boys, and the thousand adult
spectators of the scene. Prince Edward of Saxe-Weimar had adjudged the
first prize to the boys of the _Goliath_; the second to the boys of the
Shoreditch School at Brentford; and the third to the Lambeth School at
Lower Norwood.

After a short address by General Sir Eardley Wilmot, speaking in the
name of the Council of the Society of Arts,--

The Prince of Wales rose, and in an excellent impromptu speech
"assured the members of the Council and the boys (addressing the
latter in kindly way as 'you, my young friends'), of the
pleasure it gave the Princess, his two sons, and himself to be
present. Congratulating the schools on their excellent marching,
and on the favourable report just read, His Royal Highness added
that he hoped the boys had been up to the mark in their studies
as well as their drill."

Two boys of each prize school came in succession to the dais, and
received the prize banners from the Prince's hand. The Prince and his
sons then joined the Princess in her box, and it was a striking scene
when, after some bars of prelude, the words of 'God Bless the Prince of
Wales' were taken up by a thousand young and clear voices, the Prince
and Princess and the two lads standing in the front of the box while it
was sung. The last of the programme was then fulfilled by the bands
playing a selection of music.

The sight altogether was most gratifying. Here were 4000 boys, most of
them paupers, many of them orphans, receiving an excellent education, a
training in physical aptitudes and habits of obedience as well as in
mental studies. The Greenwich School is composed of the children of
seamen being educated for the sea, but the three thousand and more boys
of the other schools must in large part be looked upon as so much
material reclaimed to humanity. In fact, these three thousand and more
boys may, in the words of a paper put forth by the Society of Arts, "be
beheld with confident satisfaction as victims rescued from 'the bad,'
and preserved for the good as honest, self-supporting producers, and
worthy members of the community."

WEYMOUTH AND THE PORTLAND BREAK