ctory; a
beautiful picture, to fill their minds while their hands were busy at
their work; and the rippling rivers and singing birds would sing and
flow again and again in many a young head bending carefully over its
task. The excursion of the next year was on a grander scale: 250
started from Vauxhall Bridge, to go down the river to Herne Bay,
which, though it may sound ludicrously Cockneyfied, was quite as much
as the strength, and more than the stomachs of the little candlemakers
could stand; yet very delightful, notwithstanding the qualmishness and
face-playing of the majority. This year, they are all invited by the
Bishop of Winchester to the brave old castle of Farnham--a treat to
which they are looking forward with all the headlong eagerness of
youth, and which, we trust, will have other and even better results
than the pleasures we wish them. A bishop entertaining a set of
factory children will be a welcome sight in these days of clerical
pomp, when the episcopal purple so often hides the pastoral staff. It
will be a rare occurrence, but a good practice begun--to be followed,
we would fain hope, by its like in other districts.

The expense of the day at Guildford was L.28; of that at Herne Bay,
L.48; the estimated expense of the excursion for the present year is
L.55. This seems a heavy item for a single day's amusement, but the
Messrs Wilson have proved the immense advantage which their boys
derive from these excursions: the hope, the stimulus to exertion--as
only those who have worked hard at school, and behaved well generally,
join the cricket-club and the excursionists--the health, the incentive
to good conduct, and the preservation from evil habits; all these
varied good effects have convinced the directors that it is money well
spent--money that will bring in a richer percentage than government
securities or Australian gold-fields could give, for it brings in the
percentage of virtue. Not always in the power of money to gain that!
And right thankful ought we to be, when we have found any investment
whatever which will return us such rich usurious interest for what is
in itself so intrinsically valueless.

So much, then, for the Belmont Factory--for the light of that busy
wax-candle making. Turn we now to the Night-Light Factory, though our
notice of this must be brief; but brevity befits those thick, short
candle-ends.

In the autumn of 1849, the night-light trade came into the possession
of Price's Pa