One of the elder convicts, whose conduct had secured my approbation, was selected to be their schoolmaster, and by his patient perseverance they were soon brought surprisingly forward. I encouraged them by representing the great advantages they would derive from application; and had the pleasure of seeing them all eagerly engaged in one of the roads at least to religion and virtue. In this gratifying scene I took particular interest, and made it an uniform practice to set apart an hour each day from professional engagements personally to instruct them. Many advantages were thus obtained by finding sufficient employment for the greater part of their time; while, from the nature of the subject which they were engaged to study, they became regularly acquainted with moral and religious truths. By this simple proceeding, also, these boys’ minds became every day more enlightened, and a visible change for the better in every respect grew more evident, until at the end of the voyage I had the high satisfaction of seeing them, as far as general conduct went, considerably if not completely reformed; their vicious habits appearing quite subdued, and the greater number able to read the Scriptures correctly and fluently. They had also the advantage of taking with them to their new modes of life, a knowledge at least of reading well, which could not fail in some way or other to promote their future welfare. Nothing is more hurtful, it is well known, to the human mind than idleness; it is at variance with every good and noble purpose, depriving the most highly gifted of their natural energy, and derogating more almost than any other vice from the dignity of our nature. The most intelligent and active becomes under its drowsy power feeble, and in time brutalized: the brightest portion of intellectual fire which has risen from the bidding of benignant Deity, becomes dim, and dwindles in its damping medium. If then the loftier faculties of the soul lose their fine tone and tension when paralysed by this humiliating influence, how easily must the vulgar and selfish fall supine and unresisting to its mandates! Involved in habits tending chiefly to the gratifications of sense, the uneducated and thoroughly depraved relish nothing which does not pamper their passions, insensible as the swine in the mire of sensuality into which they plunge, rarely to rise again. The habits and scenes familiar to life in common society generally form the subjects of pleasing reflection or agreeable conversation: it is natural to the memory actively on all occasions to bring up its brightest stores to divert the passing hour of contemplation or association. What with virtuous minds is thus conducive to the advance of virtue, becomes in those of vicious life and disposition a source of further mischief.