tion of upwards
of 25,000 volumes. The germ of this library consisted of the books
bequeathed by Humphrey Chetham, many of them of great scarcity and value. The
collection contains comparatively few volumes of modern date. The library is
open to the use of the public without charge or restriction, and a small, but
convenient, reading-room is provided for their accommodation. Books are not
allowed to be removed from the premises, and every reader is obliged to make
an entry of each volume he wishes to obtain. Notwithstanding the immense
population of Manchester and Salford, this valuable institution is
comparatively little used, the number of readers averaging less than twenty
per day.

SWINTON SCHOOL.--In connexion with the Workhouse an Industrial House and
School has been erected at Swinton, five miles from the City, which affords
so admirable an example for imitation by all manufacturing or crowded
communities, that we are glad to be able to extract the main facts concerning
it from a graphic description in the first volume of Dickens's Household
Words:--

"Swinton School cost sixty thousand pounds, and is a handsome building in
the Tudor style of architecture, with a frontage of 450 feet, containing
more than 100 windows. Pleasure grounds and play grounds surround it, and
it resembles more a nobleman's palace than the Home of Pauper Children.
The inmates consist of 630 children, of whom 305 are orphans, and 124
deserted by their parents, under charge of a Chaplain, a Head Master, a
Medical Officer, a Roman Catholic Priest, a Governor, a Matron, six
Schoolmasters, and four School-mistresses, with a numerous staff of
officials, Nurses, and Teachers of Trades, receiving salaries and wages
amounting to 1,800 pounds a-year, besides board. Some in the institution
are as young as one year and a half.

All are educated, and those who are old enough are taught trades and
domestic employments. When they leave they are furnished with two suits
of clothes. The character of the Institution stands so high, that the
public are eager for the girls as domestic servants. If it has not
already been done, we hope that the cultivation of land on the system of
market gardens will be added to the trades, as affording a more certain,
and, in some respects, more generally useful employment. Educated
agricultural labourers are rare, much prized, and soon promoted to be
o