to erect a large building for the accommodation of the boys; and to enclose a considerable piece of land for a kitchen garden, in which they were to labour during the summer season. The erection of the building necessarily occupied a considerable time, but the count granted Mr. Heard the use of the right wing of his own house, and he soon collected 50 boys from the villages; the barbarous rudeness of their manners corresponded with their miserable appearance; the generality of them had long filthy hair, swarming with vermin; dirty faces, and tattered garments which scarcely covered their nakedness; no shoes, no stockings; their looks were expressive of hunger and misery. Such were they, and such would they have continued to be: accustomed to a wandering, idle, vicious life, and quite unfit to fill any useful station, they would have turned out pests to society, had they not thus been rescued from the abyss of misery by the benevolence of their noble master, who raised these miserable orphans to habits of industry, virtue, and happiness. About a fortnight afterwards they were all neatly clothed, and on the 9th of December, 1818, the school was publicly opened, and consecrated according to the rites of the Greek church. The ragged little beggars were now metamorphosed into clean orderly scholars, who seemed to pride themselves not a little in their improved appearance. They had all by this time learned the alphabet, and some to write upon slates, and they performed the evolutions of the system to the

admiration of the spectators, who began to be convinced that peasants, though slaves, are human beings. Mr. Heard's chief object in taking these 50 boys under instruction before the school-room was built, was to prepare them to act as monitors, and the rapidity with which they learned was truly astonishing. Their excessive natural stupidity had been urged as a reason for not attempting to instruct them; but it now appeared that human nature is the same in every country and in all classes, and that the difference which we observe between the highly polished inhabitants of France, England, and other countries of Europe, and the barbarian, arises principally from education, habit, and example. Order was soon introduced into the new institution, and the children arranged into different classes of labour, according to their age and strength: the eldest of the boys were appointed to be carpenters, shoemakers, or smiths, according to their own choice, while some of the younger and more feeble were employed in splitting the bark of the linden tree, others in platting it into shoes; some platting straw for hats, others preparing willows for making baskets, and some had learned to make fishing-nets. The hour of assembling in school during the summer was seven in the morning, and they came out again at ten; three hours in the day being amply sufficient to teach them reading, writing, and the four first rules of arithmetic, in two years : from ten to eleven, they were allowed to play; at eleven, the dinner-bell rung, and they proceeded two and two to the diningroom, where grace was distinctly pronounced by the monitor of the

day, whose duty it was to read to his companions, while eating their dinners, a portion of the Holy Scriptures. At twelve o'clock, they arranged themselves in classes, according to their employment, and proceeded to their different masters to work, from which they gene rally returned about eight in the evening; at nine they supped, and immediately after supper, their names were called over by the monitor-general, and those absent marked down for inquiry the following day. This being done, and the Evening Hymn sung by them, they retired to rest. Eight months after the opening of the school, more than 60 children went in procession to their benefactor, count Romanzoff, dressed in clothes and shoes of their own making. His excellency on this occasion ordered them a better dinner than usual, and promised to partake of it with them; which promise he fulfilled, to the inexpressible pleasure of the poor children. From this time the institution continued to prosper, and even those who had opposed, joined in praising it: the children made rapid progress, both in learning and their trades,

and became cheerful, obliging, and industrious.

A strict observance of the Sabbath was not forgotten in the institution, and that part of the day not spent in church was appropriated to reading extracts from the Holy Scriptures.

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By means of the school at Homel, the British system of education spread to Poland, where hitherto the strongest prejudices had existed against instructing the peasantry. Mr. Radovitch, young man of an amiable disposition, was sent by the University of Vilno to study the system, which he did with the greatest assiduity; and soon after his return, three schools were established for the poor upon this plan; and according to the last accounts from thence, they were actively employed in the establishment of more.

In April, 1821, the school at Homel being completely established, and a plan laid down for extending the means of instruction to all the villages of the count's estate, Mr. Heard left home to return to England.