they result in great saving to the
ratepayers. Taking the yearly cost of a boarder
at ten pounds, which is about the average
amount, the charge contrasts favourably
with such figures as are presented by the
Leeds Industrial School, where each child
costs more than fifteen pounds a year,
without reckoning interest of money on the
school buildings, which cost some seventeen
thousand pounds, and which, at five per
cent, would raise the cost of each child
by about two pounds annually. In the
eighteenth annual report of the Poor Law
Board, it appears that in twenty-five years
six district schools have been established,
annual average expense per child of
nearly twenty pounds. At the Central
London School, Hanwell, the expense
contrasts still more unfavourably with the
boarding-out charges: being twenty-eight
pounds for each child.

The Bath Committee, who appear to
have set about their work with an earnest
sense of their responsibility, and with a
business-like determination to do the best
they could for their helpless charges—which
example we take this opportunity of
commending to the attention of certain guardians
of the poor in the disagreeably renowned
parish of St. Pancras, London—upon
consideration of all this evidence, advised:

That, the boarding-out system should
be adopted in the Bath Union. That, with
each child should be given three shillings a
week, an outfit of clothes such as are worn
by the children of the labouring poor, and
six shillings and sixpence a quarter after
the first three months for repairing clothes
and replacing them as required; school
fees; and attendance of medical officers.

On the 7th of April in this year, this
report was adopted by the guardians with
only two dissentient voices out of a board
of thirty-three; and the boarding-out
system is consequently now in full operation
in the Bath Union.

Excellent rules have been drawn up for
the supervision of the children; and the
particulars required to be ascertained by
the relieving officer, and countersigned by
a guardian of the parish, are extremely
sensible and well calculated to get at the
truth. The visitors at schools attended by
boarder-children, are also required to
furnish periodically, answers to a set of
questions. There is no encouragement to
fussy amateur interference, harmful to the
interests of the children, and likely to lead
to remissness on the part of the official
inspectors. The work is directed to be
done in a business-like way by proper
officials, and the Bath Guardians begin
their instructions to persons receiving
boarders from the union in these words:

"The Guardians of the Bath Union,
anxious for the welfare of the children
whom the failure of their natural protectors
have thrown upon their care, believe that
they will best discharge their trust by
placing the children with families in which
they will learn lessons of industry, frugality,
and self-reliance, and be brought up in the
fear of God and the practice of virtue."

The Bath Guardians have already been
met, pretty frequently, by references to
Mrs. Mann and Mrs. Sowerberry, to the
value of Mr. Bumble's inspections, and to
the cruel treatment of Oliver Twist. Even
the ghost of Mother Brownrigg has been
invoked by their opponents. Having some
authority to speak in the name of Oliver
Twist, we here record on his behalf that he
suffered from no system, but suffered from
an utter absence of system; and that it
was his misfortune to be a pauper child in
days when pauper children were out of
sight and out of mind. The light has been
let in upon them since, and no Cæsar,
individual or corporate, can hide their sun
with a blanket, or so much as make the
attempt, without being publicly tossed in it.

NATURAL GHOSTS.

WITHOUT saying a word for or against the
supernatural appearance of dead and dying men,
ministering spirits, bad spirits, and all the
demons that are found in fire, air, flood, or
underground, let us give a good word to the
ghosts that are no ghosts. Some of them are
quite natural and wholesome, seen by healthy
persons, and often by more than one person at
the same time. Others are natural and
unwholesome, seen usually by sick persons, and,
in nearly all cases, by one person only. The
familiar form of the healthy, natural apparition
is our good old friend, our other self, whom we
have had the pleasure of seeing a great many
times in print, the giant of the Brocken. I
climb the Brocken to see the sunrise on a calm
morning, and standing on the granite rocks
known as the Tempelskanzel, observe that the
other mountains towards the south-west lying
under the Brocken are covered with thick
clouds. Up rises the sun behind me, and forth
starts the giant, five or six hundred feet high,
who bestrides the clouds for a couple of seconds
and is gone. To see one's shadow in this fashion
there needs a horizontal sunbeam and a bank of
vapour of the right sort in the right place. We
may go up the Brocken at sunrise a dozen times
and hardly have a chance of finding sunbeam
and vapour-bank disposed to favour us with the
raising of this ghost. The ghost of Caesar that
appeared to Brutus at Philippi is as much of a