pursuit that is, of all others, the least favourable to the
development of the moral and intellectual faculties of man. How it is
operating may be judged by the following description from an English
writer already quoted:--

"Of the children of the poor, who are yearly born in England, vast
numbers never receive any education at all, while many others never
enter any thing better than a dame or a Sunday-school. In the towns
they are left in crowds until about eight or nine years of age, to
amuse themselves in the dirt of the streets, while their parents
pursue their daily toil. In these public thoroughfares, during the
part of their lives which is most susceptible of impressions and most
retentive of them, they acquire dirty, immoral, and disorderly
habits; they become accustomed to wear filthy and ragged clothes;
they learn to pilfer and to steal; they associate with boys who have
been in prison, and who have there been hardened in crime by evil
associates; they learn how to curse one another, how to fight, how to
gamble, and how to fill up idle hours by vicious pastimes; they
acquire no knowledge except the knowledge of vice; they never come in
contact with their betters; and they are not taught either the truths
of religion or the way by which to improve their condition in life.
Their amusements are as low as their habits. The excitements of low
debauchery too horrible to be named, of spirituous liquors, which
they begin to drink as early as they can collect pence wherewith to
buy them, of the commission and concealments of thefts, and of rude
and disgusting sports, are the pleasures of their life. The idea of
going to musical meetings such as those of the German poor, would be
scoffed at, even if there were any such meetings for them to attend.
Innocent dancing is unknown to them. Country sports they cannot have.
Read they cannot. So they hurry for amusement and excitement to the