The wearers of these badges are generally selected at the quarterly examinations; they are exempt from punishment except by special order; enjoy all the privileges of a boy petty officer, and are not employed as sweepers or bag-stowers. A boy is awarded the badge or deprived of it by the captain in person.

The badges are furnished gratuitously; they are the same in shape as those worn by the men, but are somewhat smaller, and are similar in shape to a sergeant's chevrons. They are of gold for the mustering suits; red-worsted for their every-day suits; and blue for the duck suits. Petty officer boys wear in addition a small crown of gold and crimson. No boy is allowed more than three badges.

RECREATIONS AND AMUSEMENTS.

After study hours, the school-room is thrown open to the boys. They have here all conveniences for reading, writing, and playing games. Chessmen, checkers, dominoes, puzzles, &c., are provided in great plenty for them, and I noticed very many at such games. The school-room is well lighted in the evening, as are also the main and middle decks.

There is an excellent library of 800 volumes (some of the ships have many more). Periodicals of all kinds are supplied, especially such as are suited to boyish tastes. A magic-lantern is also furnished each ship, in connection with which lectures are given twice a week in winter under the superintendence of the chaplain. A vaulting-horse, parallel bars, and a horizontal bar, and thirteen sets of dumb-bells are furnished as part of each ship's equipment. The horse and bars are kept on the quarter-deck, and are always placed for use out of study hours. On Thursday afternoons and on all holidays, the full apparatus is set out. Boys in entering are passed through a course of twelve lessons in gymnastics before being put to gunnery drill. A non-commissioned officer of marines is detailed as an instructor in each training ship.

In connection with the subject of amusements, &c., what is called the capitation allowance may be spoken of, as it is the fund from which all the above is supplied, in addition to meeting many other expenses.

The allowance is 12 shillings or $3 per annum for each boy. The reg ulations defining its expenditure state the following items as the principal ones for which it may be used:

1st. Mess gear not ordinarily supplied.

2d. Extra fittings for school-room, bath and model rooms.

3d. Materials for keeping mess-traps clean, blacking and shoe-brushes for each mess.

4th. Thread for tailors, and materials for repairs for shoemakers, shoestrings, braid for watch-marks.

5th. Music.

6th. Two to six cents a week for prizes for petty officer and badge boys. 7th. Allowance of 1 shilling per diem to each boy requiring it, as subsistence money on his way to and from home, when on leave.

8th. Bats, balls, and other requisites for games and amusements. 9th. Expenses for excursions. (An annual excursion by steamer is given the boys to some pleasant place adjacent to their port.)

10th. Extra expenses for Christmas dinners.

The accounts of this fund are kept separately; the expenditure is under the direct control of the captain, and he has much latitude regarding its disposition. Boys are allowed 6 cents weekly as pocket-money, which is given them before going ashore on Thursdays.

I think the preceding will show to what civilizing influences the boys are subjected. They are well fed, well clothed, and well treated, and taught to be excessively neat in clothing and in person. They meet with no harshness, their treatment throughout being thoroughly humanizing and kind. Many of them of course are greatly elevated in the scale of well-being by entering the service; but great numbers likewise come from families in good circumstances of life. These are not degraded, as was formerly too much the case, by life on board a man-ofwar. The life is made as pleasant and comfortable and respectable as life on board ship can be. There must always be certain drawbacks; ships cannot always afford the space sufficient for proper comfort and cleanliness; but what can be done in the English service has been done. The sailor has been made a man of high respectability, instead of the drunken, careless fellow of some years since. The men who man her ships are a body of whom England is justly proud. There is no town. in England so distant from the sea but that the man-of-war's man is often seen, and always in uniform, which he wears as if he respected it. The army is on a very different footing. An enlistment in this is regarded as the last resource of the ne'er-do-well. The people of the country village regard the name of soldier as much synonymous with the word vagabond. While of late years the character of the soldier has been falling off, the character of the sailor has been steadily improving. So much has the former been the case, that it is felt that something must be done to induce the enlistment of more respectable men in the army, and the adoption of a training system similar to that of the navy is much discussed.

The basis of my remarks on the subject of the army are the late parliamentary debates on the army bill of the present session, so that I do not make them unadvisedly.

So much, on the other hand, has the sailor grown in popular estimation, that double the number of lads offer themselves that can be accepted. Every boy who goes on leave, on his return is followed by a number of applications from his district to the authorities of the ship.

Whether for peace or war, men so trained and disciplined are valuable to any country. They are, on the average, even if they serve but one enlistment, twelve years under discipline; they are obliged to serve until twenty-eight years of age at least. A great many do not serve beyond this, but it is a mistake to suppose that they are lost to the country, or

that their training goes for naught; the country at large will benefit by it; society gets a young man in the prime of life; sober, disciplined in mind and body; a valuable man to any community, whether civil or military.

We in the United States expend vast sums in educating the children of the nation; we recognize education as one of the necessities of our national existence; why cannot the same principle apply with even greater force to those who are selected to uphold the national honor and interests, and who may be emphatically termed the children of the nation? Money so expended is well spent, and though the cost to England is something over $500,000 a year for these boys, the result is well worth it. The principle has been recognized in the unequaled training of officers given by our government, to those both of the Army and Navy, and every officer hopes in our system of training lately established, a result which will give us a class of men worthy of a nation which has made the education of its people its boast. The command of an educated and thinking class of men is a benefit, too, to the officer; affording him a stimulus, and releasing him from the necessity of directing too much of his energy and time towards the mere disciplining of those under him, collected, as they have been too much with us, from every nation, and addicted to every vice to which the waifs of humanity are subject. The last ship in which I served had, in a crew of 301 men, the representatives of seventeen different nationalities. Is it not time that a country of fifty millions of people should be able to find among its own citizens enough to man the few ships we keep afloat, instead of calling upon Finland and the Sandwich Islands (both of which countries were represented in the crew I speak of) for its defenders? We protect almost every species of labor but that which goes towards the working of our guns and the handling of our ships.

COST OF TRAINING.

The average cost per boy for one year by returns of August, 1878, was £45 158. 8d., or about $225. This cost, however, included an expenditure for the whole force of £32,212, which was incurred by the following: Wages and food of that portion of the crews which would be discharged to shore if the ship were paid off. Difference between full and half pay of certain officers; special allowances, &c..

Repairs of ships, tenders, coal, &c

Total

£17, 505

14,707

32, 212

There is a total on account of the boys of......

Giving an average expenditure for each of about £33, or about $160 for

twelve months. This includes the following

Clothing and bedding gratuity....

Wages for one year as second class boy.

Food for one year.

32, 212

81, 378

This is a great deal less than the cost per boy on board the Warspite (the oldest established of the mercantile training-ships in England). There the cost of each boy sent afloat is over £60. The Exmouth makes no better showing when the number of boys sent out is considered, nor does any one of the many others stationed about the British coasts. The total cost of the Greenwich Hospital School per boy (vide post) is about £20 a year, but the circumstances are quite different. The boy may be kept as long as four and a half years, thus making his total cost much greater.

Nor even if the cost of the training-ships of the mercantile marine were much less, would it be advisable to take many from them into the Navy, instead of training the full complement in naval vessels. By ar. rangement with a certain number of these ships, boys who can pass the naval standards, after receiving the mercantile training, can be received into the naval training-ships as second-class boys; but not more than forty a year pass. And in the language of Admiral Nicolson, R. N., "The boys are no more trained as compared with our boys, than a mere militiamen with a guardsman."

CHAPTER VIII.

ROUTINES.

In the following, the word "instructor" refers to the petty-officer instructor, whose status has been before described. Only the essential parts of the routines are given.

SUMMER.

MONDAY.

A. M.

5.00.-Turn hands up.

5.10.-Instructors inspect and stow hammocks. 5.20.-Watch clean upper and main decks.

Watch below wash and bathe.

6.05.-Watch below to quarters, to clean guns.

6.30.-Breakfast.

7.00.-Watch stow bags.

Watch below clear up mess-decks.

7.15.-Watch to muster; to be exercised at stations by the instructors and boatswain's mates.

7.40.-Assembly; cross upper yards and exercise at station.

8.00.-Watch below to quarters; watch on deck square yards. 8.30.-Assembly. Boys fall in for inspection, towels in hand.

Inspection is made by instructors, ships' corporals, barbers, and tailors. After inspection towels are hung on the lines to dry. (NOTE. I would mention here that the lines on which towels are hung are left up until the towels are dry. They remained up even at an inspection by the port admiral which I witnessed).

9.00.-Divisions and prayers.

9.15.-General sail drill.

10.15.-Stand easy ten minutes, afterward continue sail drill, other watch aloft. 11.30.-Down top-gallant and royal yards, clear up decks, reeve clothes lines. Cooks and captains of messes prepare dinner tables. Messes, when ready, are inspected by a lieutenant.

P. M.

Dinner.

12.45.-Stand by towels.

Assembly. Boys fall in on quarter deck. Offenders are punished in the presence of all the boys. Boys told off as per routine.

2.25.-Stand easy five minutes.

Boys of first instruction go over mast-head.

2.30.-Change drills.

3.30.-Retreat. Up bags; shift into night clothing; wash clothes.

5.00.-Tea.

5.30.-Fire stations; afterwards one watch of boys to go in boats to practice pulling. The other watch to bathe.

7.30.-Up boats.

Supper, prayers, and hammocks.

8.30.-Captains of messes report to instructors that messes have been cleared up. 8.45.-Pipe down.

9.00.-Rounds.