442 EUROPEAN AGRICULTURE. 



institution is military. They have a full-rigged ship of ample 

 size in the yard, that boys designed for naval life may here take 

 their first practical lessons ; and they have a well-stocked farm 

 of five hundred acres, which is under direction to be cultivated 

 by the pupils. The institution is situated in a healthy part of 

 the country, and near a large market-town. They employ an 

 educated and experienced agriculturist as director of the farm. 

 The first object is to render it productive, that it may go as far 

 as it can be made to go towards defraying the expenses of the 

 institution ; the second, to instruct the boys in the best and 

 most improved methods of husbandry. The institution had its 

 foundation in private subscription, and though, in its commence 

 ment, it had many difficulties to struggle with, it has now a firm 

 establishment.* Besides a farm, there are connected with the 

 institution a large garden, an extensive nursery, and a manufac 

 tory for the fabrication of all the implements, carriages, &c., 

 which are used on the farm. The boys are likewise employed 

 in the making of the shoes, caps, clothes, and bedding, which 

 are required, and many fancy articles which serve for sale, and 

 give them occupation, when by any circumstances they are pre 

 vented from out-door labor. The number of pupils is at present 

 450. It is not intended to keep them after sixteen, but they are 

 willing to receive them at the earliest convenient age. I saw 

 several not more than six or seven years old. They li^e in fam 

 ilies of forty or fifty, in separate houses, under the care of a 

 respectable man and his wife, who give them their whole time. 

 This seemed to me a most judicious provision. They have a 

 guardian with them in the fields, who always works with them. 

 Many of them have been condemned at courts of justice for some 

 petty offence, and many of them, orphans and friendless, have 

 been taken up in the streets in a condition of miserable vaga 

 bondage. The discipline of the institution is altogether moral 

 and paternal. Confinement, abstinence, solitude, and disgrace. 

 constitute the chief punishments ; but there are no whips, nor 

 blows, nor chains. It has been so far eminently successful. A 



* The Vicomte de Courteilles gave a large estate, and M. De Metz, a dis 

 tinguished philanthropist and a royal counsellor, besides sacrificing his high 

 situation at court, lives among the children, and gives the greatest of all chari 

 ties, his whole time his hand, his head, and heart, entirely to this object. 



