tailoring or shoemaking, and the necessity of
sitting still, the close monotony of labour,
irks them sorely. In the garden, always
a-foot and about the walks—changing their
occupation frequently—hoeing or digging,
potting, tieing, fetching and carrying, watering,
cart-driving, trotting betimes in the
morning to Covent Garden with the plants
ready for sale; they are still busy and restless,
innocently busy—restless in their well-
directed toil.

Moreover, it is no light thing to take from
the midst of filth and darkness, wretched
youths, and set them where they may earn
honest bread in constant labour under the
broad heavens, among pleasant odours and
forms made by the All-wise Artificer to
charm the eye. One may drink in through
two faculties the lesson of the rose, without
having that third faculty which would enable
us to shape its substance as an argument
within our brains, or that fourth faculty
which might enable us to coin our perception
into words upon the tongue. To watch the
growth of plants from day to day—to see
how quietly the flower-bud spreads into
blossom and the blossom yielding its heart
as a fruit-bud ripens into fruit and seed, is
happy occupation, full of change—full of
intense relief to the poor felon who is groping
his way into light.

Mr. Walker, of course, connected his idea
of labour with a nursery garden, because it
happened that he was a gardener by early
training. Had he been bred a tailor he
would doubtless have invited boys to sit
upon the board with him, would have cut
with his great shears the thread of crime,
and would have smoothed their cares down
with the goose. It was by accident that Mr.
Walker was taught to apply the healing
influence of labour in that way which we
believe to be of all the most efficient.

Chiefly domestic trouble led him to resign
two or three years ago, his office in
Westminster, as City Missionary, and then, after
a short time spent in connection with a
reformatory, of which he learnt to disapprove
the plan, he took the garden of which we are
speaking. He took it at a cheap rent, on a
repairing lease. There are sixteen or seventeen
greenhouses or hothouses upon the
ground, which he is bound to paint within
a given time—just now expiring—and we
found him, when we called, up to his eyes in
paint; he and his young men being the
painters. They are the carpenters, too; they
have made a great number of new garden
frames, painted and glazed them. It is one
of the good points in their kind of work, that
they must all learn to be handy in a
score of ways. The cottage now upon the
grounds yields scanty accommodation, and
accordingly the young gardeners have
partitioned off part of a garden building that
abuts upon the house to make a dormitory,
upon the walls of which there are
suggestive scripture texts placarded. The
lease requires that a second cottage shall be
built, and the little community will therefore
soon give its attention to the art of bricklaying.
A master bricklayer will be engaged to
give instruction and direct the works; but,
the young gardeners themselves will turn
their hands to the work of the carpenter and
mason. Life of this sort should yield good
colonists, good servants also in the garden
or the farm at home.

In setting up his establishment at Clapham
Mr. Walker had the aid of six hundred
pounds lent by a person friendly to his
enterprise. The repayment of this loan has
pressed upon him; but the garden is in good
order, and in good odour, too, as we shall see,
the rent is low, and there is nothing to
despair about. Nevertheless, it would be
well if he were the manager and not
proprietor. A few persons might put to good use
ampler means than a poor missionary can
command in extending and confirming the
usefulness of a reformatory of this sort. We
believe, indeed, that some change of the kind
is talked about by those who are best
acquainted with and most sincerely interested
in the story of the garden.

The youths employed in the Wellington
Industrial Nursery are discharged prisoners
and thieves, not too young to be able
workers, who, being desirous to escape into
an honest way of life, begin by offering
themselves as labourers to Mr. Walker. They do
his work and receive in return food, lodging,
and proper wages. The usual course of a day
at the Nursery is—work from six to eight,
then prayers, then breakfast. Work from nine
to twelve or one, and then an hour for dinner.
Work from one or two till six, when all come
into the house, wash, sup; after supper, read
and receive instruction until nine o'clock,
when again there are prayers and all go to
bed. When extra work is done—at the time
of our visit they were working fourteen hours
a day—they receive two pence an hour as
extra wages. Mr. Walker has a younger
brother who assists in the superintendence
of the Nursery. They maintain strict
discipline in the midst of perfect sympathy and
kindness. The penalty for disobedience or
neglect of duty is the loss of a meal or half
a meal; but a boy, after the first days of
struggle into the new state of life, seldom
gives trouble.

The life in the garden is to many of them
a change so complete as to be very startling.
"I know," said Mr. Walker to one
newcomer, "all your past life. I can tell you
every prison you have been in. Don't think
I am mistaken as to what you have been.
But I tell you what you are. You are an
honest man. There's no such thing as a
thief upon these premises. If I thought that
any person in my employment was a thief, I
would discharge him instantly." The youth
was kept awake for many nights by the