Then came the summer-excursion. The first experiment was in June 1850, when 100 of them went down to Guildford early in the morning, and returned late in the evening. It was a beautiful day, bright and cloudless; and as those London boys wandered about the country lanes and meadows of Guildford, and heard the ceaseless hum of insect life, and the uncaged birds singing high in the blue sky, and saw the wild-flowers in the hedgerows, and the glancing waters in their way, we may be sure that more than mere enjoyment was stored up in their minds, and that thoughts which might not be brought out into set phrases, but which would be undying in their influence through life, were raised in each heart that drank in the glories and the holy teaching of nature, perhaps on that day for the first time. It was something for them to think of in the toil and heat of the factory; 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.