The Sun.
London, England, 1861-08-07 00:00:00

SPAIN.

Some of the Madrid journals having asserted
that General Serrano was about to resign the office
of Captain-General of Cuba, and to be replaced by
General Prim or General Ros de Olano, the semi-
official Correspondancia declares that he has no in-
tention of retiring for the present, and that, on the
contrary, he was going to San Domingo to organize
the Government of that colony. According to the
Epoca, the Duke de Valencia (Marshal Narvaez)
is to return to Madrid early next month. The
Granada journals state that three poor persons—
one a hatter, another a charcoal dealer, and the
third a public letter writer, had been lodged in pri-
son on the charge of having distributed Protestant
works and defended Protestant coctrines at
Alhama, Trigo, Luno, and Matamoros. It is
added that the English at Granada were liberally
providing for their wants.

A

' 'lB6

LITERATURE.
--to--
Recollections of Willianz Jay, of Bath. With

Occasional Glances at some of ins Contem-
poraries and Friends. By his son, Cyrus Jay.
Hamilton, Adams, and Co.

We regret that the demands upon our columns
have prevented us from noticing until now the
above very interesting and well-written volume.
It is intended in a great degree evidently to form
a supplement to the autobiography of this eminent
Dissenting preacher, published a short time after
his decease, by his literary executors, and supplies
a copious and minute narrative of those thoughts
and actions, and more particularly of those private
domestic habits and pursuits, in which it would be
unbecoming for a man either to praise or censure
himself.

Probably, with the exception of Rowland Hill,
no preacher among any of the Dissenting congre-
gations of this country enjoyed a larger or a wider
popularity than the late William Jay of Bath.
His first sermon was preached at Allington, a
village in Wiltshire, when he was little more than
sixteen. He began the regular discharge of a
Dissenting minister's ordinary duties at the
early age of nineteen, and continued them unin-
terruptedly for a period of sixty-five years. During
this long career he made the acquaintance of a host
of celebrities of all classes, professions, and varieties
of religious and political opinions. Among them
were the Marquis of Lansdowne, Samuel Wesley,
Hannah More, Lady Huntingdon, Robert Hall,
William Cobhett, Edward Irving, Rowland Hill,
James Montgomery, Etty the artist, and many
others. Of these well-known personages we have
many very interesting anecdotes, capitally told, by
the author of these recollections, who, considering
the position in which he stands (being the son of
the late preacher), we are bound to say has executed
his task with great fairness and impartiality, and
has out of the materials afforded him produced an
extremely interesting and well-written volume.
The work is illustrated with two portraits of Mr.
Jay, at the age of nineteen and at the age of eighty-
five, and also with a sketch taken of him only the
day before his death.

Journal of the Workhouse Visiting Society. No.
XIV. Longman.

This excellent periodical contains some very in-
teresting articles on the management of pauper
children. The extracts from the Inspector's Reports
on the schools for this class afford some very valu-
able hints. One of the most successful projects for
improving the condition of the boys has been that
adopted at the Boys School, Union Workhouse,
Wolverhampton, where the master has tried a sys-
tem of military drill with very satisfactory results.
The improvement in the health, manners, and in-
telligence of the boys was surprising ; and this
training was only the first step to the establish.
ment of a drum and fife band, and even a rifle corps.
It is easy to understand how beneficial the interest
inspired by these employments must be to these
unfortunate children, whose desolate position lays
them peculiarly open to temptation. As Mr. Dutton,
the originator of this movement, remarks, such boys
would be especially fitted, if well trained, to enter
the army or navy, and would have great advan-
tages in being able to • read, write, cypher, and
make and mend their own clothes and shoes. The
system generally followed, of apprenticing
them in the immediate neighbourhood,
has many drawbacks. Their friends and relatives
are often living near and among the worst charac-
ters in the parish; they drag the boy to their own
level, or at least effectually hinder him from rising
in the world. Miss Twining, the able and benevolent
secretary to the Workhouse Visiting Society, gives
us the results of her experience and observation of
the schools for pauper girls, in an answer to ,the
questions of the Commissioners appointed to inquire
into the state of popular education in England.
The evils attending the association of young girls
with the disreputable fe:nales so common in work-
houses are incalculable, and it is a matter of sur-
prise that men of common feeling, much less of
Christian principle, should tolerate such a state of
things. We do not wonder that one of the guar-
dians of a workhouse declared that he often gave
out-door relief, contrary to the rules, to families
where the women were decent and respectable,
rather than expose them to such a moral atmo.
sphere. In one Union, where the children are
taught in the national school until they are
sixteen, and after that enter the adult ward
for women, the chaplain states that in one
week their whole manner and appearance
changes for the worse. The masters and mistresses
of unions will rarely, it is said, give evidence on this
subject for fear of offending the guardians, who
object to any change on account of the expense. A
good schoolmistress was asked why she seemed so
depressed about her work in a workhouse school,
and answered that she felt she was training up the
girls for a life of vice and depravity ; " one after
another of them went out to carry out the lessons
she had learnt from the adults, and she returned,
like them, ruined and degraded, to be a life-long
pauper." It is certainly somewhat inconsistent
to appeal to public charity to assist in
establishing penitentiaries and reformatories
for women while the national institutions are
thus training them for vice. In the boys' school
the teachers also lament that they can learn no in-
dustrial training without mixing with the adults,
and that consequently the last three months of
"finishing" in the house completes their ruin. The
economy of the guardians thus brings on the coun-
try the expense of maintaining paupers and convicts
for life, to say nothing of the account that must be
rendered for the charge of these young souls, thus
driven into crime and degradation. Miss Twining
justly asks—
" With training schools wanted urgently for boys for the
army and navy, for labour of all kinds in the colonies,
where they would be gladly received at sixteen; and for
girls as servants, equally at home and abroad, why should
there be all this sad waste of material, and a race educated
to fill our Workhouses ? for as long as our 'Workhouses are
what they are, and seem to be intended to be by those who
theorise about them, places of degradation, it must be fatal
to bring up children in them, daily seeing, if not associa-
ting with, all those classes who make it their home. How
naturally must the idea be planted in their minds that they
may, and probably will, do the same. From being brought
un there, and knowing no other home, they really get, as
they say, to love the Workhouse walls,' and return there
on the slightest pretence. Could Workhouses be con-
sidered, and in time become, institutions for the relief of
that misfortune which must ever be found •more or less
largely in the lower classes of any country like ours,—as
hospitals for the sick who cannot be received into those
which are voluntarily supported ; as penitentiaries for
those whom no other asylums can or will admit ; as homes
for the aged who have no relations to support them, and
for the orphan children who must be provided for ; and if
all these classes could be separated and really classified,
there would not be the same need for the separation of the
schools : but every one must know how all this differs from
existing circumstances, and how fatal a school, therefore,
the Workhouse is for children."

Miss Twining also recommends the visits of lady
inspectors to the girls' schools, and there is no doubt
that under proper regulations this would be a very
great advantage. The workhouse authorities are
not, however, very fond of interference. We may
suppose they think their arrangements so perfect
that any alteration must be disastrous. It seems
somewhat strange, seeing that the institutions are
national, and the rates are certainly not paid only
by the guardians or managers, that it is a mattt rof
such difficulty for the public to obtain admission.
We subjoin two letters from the " Correspondence,"
one of which is a striking commentary upon the
other.