the masters leavened our minds; indifference gave way to zeal and the study became delightful. An interest feeble at first had grown rapidly. Among the early favourable indications were the requests for information as to the lives of authors and the eager reading of biographies and literary notices. Then arose the desire to read other works of a given author, or to be allowed to spend another month in more minute study of a masterpiece already absorbed in the rough. Notes poured steadily in upon me exhibiting in countless ways the growth of a sentiment which can be termed nothing else than enthusiasm. It was a true _naissance_ or birth of letters. Like the scholars of the Revival period in England, our students, inspired by the simple love of learning, sought culture everywhere. Every available source of enlightenment, every volume of classic English in our reference library, was in its journey from hand to hand of our students a testimony to their enthusiasm. Books which had long remained unused suddenly became very popular, and the delight in reading expanded so as to include not merely literature but other lines as well--ethics, economics, sociology, history, the ancient classics, natural science. Thus on a very small scale, but none the less truly, our revival followed an instinctive development entirely similar to the great Renaissance. As we write the interest is undiminished, but rather grows by its own great energy of motion. The new spirit penetrates the whole life of the institution. In their social intercourse our inmates make regular topics of books and authors; informal debates diversify the Dining Hall exercises, and the instructor is gratuitously made the arbiter of frequent discussions of the “new learning.” Even with incorrigible and indifferent men, who remain uninfected by enthusiasm, the simple strain of inexorable requirement has proved and is proving valuable. In the Report for 1888 Mr. Z. R. Brockway, the General Superintendent, writes of the literary training of criminals:--