ABSTRACT
When the hitherto neglected child enters this, he is very carefully nurtured ;-attention is paid that he is neither too hot, nor too cold ;-he has that precise quantity of food provided for him which is found by scientific investigation to be most conducive to the preservation and strengthening of his physical powers ; a surgeon watches over his health of body, a chaplain over his spiritual condition, while a schoolmaster devotes his time to the training of his intellectual nature. It would seem that the walls of this school-house are rather unnecessarily thick and massive to confine the tender limbs of a little child ;-that the keys used to lock him in are somewhat ponderous ;-that the stern military governor and the strong rough-looking turnkeys are rather strange attendants on a creature almost a nursling. But let that go ;-the little boy has qualified himself to be taken care of by his country ; the young girl
has shown that she too is of some importance to society, for she can do harm to it, and so must be cared for ;-the child that was a noxious weed is now to be reared as a hot-house plant, and trained into beautiful form,-for a sh01·t time ;-then it is to be thrown again on the cold hard world, to become more rank in its growth, more hurtful, more unsightly, even from the very circumstance of its hothouse abode.
