The dining-room was long, ample, and furnished in a plain but comfortable manner; and the walls were ornamented with large engraved portraits of Queen Victoria, the Prince Consort, and their children, all in gilt frames. Prince Alfred, during his recent visit to the Cape, became greatly interested in this College, and on returning to England presented it with these pictures. The boys have a thoroughly religious and useful education, but at the same time each one is obliged to learn some trade. They are allowed to choose whatever handicraft they may fancy, and almost all trades were popular among them except that of the tailor, which is regarded as a menial service, and in their own country is always performed by women, who, wherever the light of the blessed gospel has not shone, to the practical illumination of the heart, are looked upon as a degraded and inferior class of beings. Gardening, for the same reason, is also in bad odor; and the pursuit of agriculture has yet to gain even a respectable position among these royal Kaffirs, who rarely work in the garden attached to the College, excepting when, as a slight form of punishment, they are adjudged to serve at that employment for a certain time. The design of the Institution is preparatory,--the cleverest of the boys, as they advance in their studies, being sent to England for a more thorough education, after which they usually return to their native country as missionaries and teachers. One had already been sent there, and was pursuing his literary course at Oxford. In the same building with the tailoring-room there was an English missionary lady, who had a class of six Kaffir girls. Three of them had been with her fifteen months; the rest a much shorter time. All of the former were quite proficient in reading, and one little creature, in particular, pronounced her words with an accent and voice of inimitable sweetness. After walking through the garden, and the small vineyard adjoining, we returned to the parlor, where a very nice cup of tea awaited us; and our first introduction to this Eastern custom reminded us that we had already reached the neighborhood of the Orient. While we were refreshing ourselves, a large music-box (also the gift of Prince Alfred) discoursed some charming music; after which the gentlemanly warden gave each of the ladies a bouquet from the garden, and we left with agreeable impressions of that enlarged and noble Christian benevolence which had established the Institution, and was still steadily working for its advancement.