The late annual message of the Governor of Massachusetts invites our attention to a kindred institution of charity. The chief magistrate congratulates the legislature, in language creditable to his mind and heart, on the opening of the Reform School for Juvenile Criminals, established by an act of a previous legislature. The act provides that, when any boy under sixteen years of age shall be convicted of crime punishable by imprisonment other than such an offence as is punished by imprisonment for life, he may be, at the discretion of the court or justice, sent to the State Reform School, or sentenced to such imprisonment as the law now provides for his offence. The school is placed under the care of trustees, who may either refuse to receive a boy thus sent there, or, after he has been received, for reasons set forth in the act, may order him to be committed to prison under the previous penal law of the state. They are also authorized to apprentice the boys, at their discretion, to inhabitants of the Commonwealth. And whenever any boy shall be discharged, either as reformed or as having reached the age of twenty-one years, his discharge is a full release from his sentence. It is made the duty of the trustees to cause the boys to be instructed in piety and morality, and in branches of useful knowledge, in some regular course of labor, mechanical, agricultural, or horticultural, and such other trades and arts as may be best adapted to secure the amendment, reformation, and future benefit of the boys. The class of offenders for whom this act provides are generally the offspring of parents depraved by crime or suffering from poverty and want,--the victims often of circumstances of evil which almost constitute a necessity,--issuing from homes polluted and miserable, from the sight and hearing of loathsome impurities and hideous discords, to avenge upon society the ignorance, and destitution, and neglect with which it is too often justly chargeable. In 1846 three hundred of these youthful violators of law were sentenced to jails and other places of punishment in Massachusetts, where they incurred the fearful liability of being still more thoroughly corrupted by contact with older criminals, familiar with atrocity, and rolling their loathsome vices "as a sweet morsel under the tongue." In view of this state of things the Reform School has been established, twenty-two thousand dollars having been contributed to the state for that purpose by an unknown benefactor of his race. The school is located in Westboro', on a fine farm of two hundred acres. The buildings are in the form of a square, with a court in the centre, three stories in front, with wings. They are constructed with a degree of architectural taste, and their site is happily chosen,--a gentle eminence, overlooking one of the loveliest of the small lakes which form a pleasing feature in New England scenery. From this place the atmosphere and associations of the