was soon forgotten. Huddled together on a bench about the room, and
shown out by some flaring candles stuck against the walls, were a
crowd of boys, varying from mere infants to young men; sellers of
fruit, herbs, lucifer-matches, flints; sleepers under the dry arches
of bridges; young thieves and beggars--with nothing natural to youth
about them: with nothing frank, ingenuous, or pleasant in their
faces; low-browed, vicious, cunning, wicked; abandoned of all help
but this; speeding downward to destruction; and UNUTTERABLY
IGNORANT.

This, Reader, was one room as full as it could hold; but these were
only grains in sample of a Multitude that are perpetually sifting
through these schools; in sample of a Multitude who had within them
once, and perhaps have now, the elements of men as good as you or I,
and maybe infinitely better; in sample of a Multitude among whose
doomed and sinful ranks (oh, think of this, and think of them!) the
child of any man upon this earth, however lofty his degree, must, as
by Destiny and Fate, be found, if, at its birth, it were consigned
to such an infancy and nurture, as these fallen creatures had!

This was the Class I saw at the Ragged School. They could not be
trusted with books; they could only be instructed orally; they were
difficult of reduction to anything like attention, obedience, or
decent behaviour; their benighted ignorance in reference to the
Deity, or to any social duty (how could they guess at any social
duty, being so discarded by all social teachers but the gaoler and
the hangman!) was terrible to see. Yet, even here, and among these,
something had been done already. The Ragged School was of recent
date and very poor; but he had inculcated some association with the
name of the Almighty, which was not an oath, and had taught them to