EVERYTHING that concerns the moral welfare and improvement of the sailor is of primary importance to a Maritime Power, such as that of the British Empire. Her strength and her commercial prosperity are alike dependent on her strength at sea, whether in ships destined for purposes of war, or in vessels intended only for the operations of commerce. And it may be taken for an axiom that as with all other classes of men, so with the seafaring, their physical force is closely related to, and 'dependent upon, their moral worth. In the long-run, a sober, steady, and intelligent class of seamen will produce greater results than one depraved in mind, and enfeebled, through vice, in body. The better the men in their minds, the more courageous, the more enduring, the more industrious, and the more intelligent they are likely to be. Such is the class of men which every captain would like to have for his crew. Give a skipper his choice, and he will reject the drunkards and profligates, and choose in their stead the sober and well-conducted.

Now, without dwelling any further on a subject the truth of which will not now be denied by the oldest "salt" amongst us, it is certain that the readiest way to produce a class of good men is to form first of all one of good boys. If boys are well trained, able-seamen will come from them: if boys are allowed to remain sunk in idleness, ignorance, and corruption, the task of converting them into first-class seamen is rendered infinitely more difficult. If we wish to maintain amongst us a large population of thoroughly good seafaring men, we must turn our attention to the early training of our boys. In fact, we can hardly begin too soon to mould the young sailor from the little lads that frequent the schools, or play on the quays and shores, of our maritime towns. No one will dispute this: everybody, connected either with the navy or with the merchant service, will assent to so self-evident a proposition; but though they will agree to it, it does not follow that they will act upon it, or take the proper steps for carrying their conviction into practice. Partly from the want of unity of purpose and system, which is so unfortunate a characteristic of our nation, and which has so often caused us the most serious losses; and partly from the culpable apathy and indifference of the legislature and the Government; very little, if anything, is done upon a proper scale for the education of young sailor lads, though much talk takes place about the naval reserve and the maintenance of the shipping interest.

We all call out loud enough for able seamen in the time of need, but we give ourselves hardly any trouble to train up lads for such a purpose in times of prosperity and peace.

In other words, while everybody professes to be anxious about the condition of our grown-up able-bodied seamen, nobody thinks of the sailor's child—of the little fishing-boy —of the young apprentice. We build Sailors' Homes, but we do not provide Sailors' Schools.

Now this is a serious fault; for it is evident that the more means we can give sailor lads of acquiring a general knowledge of their business, and other useful information, at an early period, the better will be our apprentices, the better our men, the better our mates, the better our masters. To put on examinations, and yet not to prepare lads for them, that is to say, not to provide special means of teaching them for the purpose, is a contradiction. If we want to secure our object, we must cast about to find the best, the readiest, and the earliest means of preparing for its attainment. We cannot begin to attend to the training of our sailor lads too soon.

It would be a very desirable, and by no means a difficult thing, to provide special means of instruction in all seaports, even through the medium of the common parochial schools. The ordinary schoolmaster can give lads all the instruction they require, even to become sailors, up to the age of 12 years, or so; and the imparting of special instruction after that age might be secured by attaching a schoolmaster skilled in navigation, &c., to each town, who might instruct able-bodied coasting seamen while ashore in the winter months, and might keep school for the boys and lads, not yet apprenticed, during the summer. It would be easy to attach a special school of this kind either to the Sailors' Home in any port (as the master of the Home might at the same time be the schoolmaster), or to any one of the parish schools, by making an arrangement to that effect with the local authorities. All that would be required would be that some constituted body, such as the Trinity House, or Lloyd's, or the Admiralty, or the Board of Trade, should organize a plan for supplying competent teachers for schools of this kind.

The schoolmaster should be thoroughly able to teach, or the school would- be worse than useless. Not much difficulty would be found in the payment of expenses; for besides the circumstance that sailors and seafaring men are always willing to pay for really good professional instruction, there could not be a more legitimate appropriation made of some portion of the Harbour dues, or of the Mercantile Marine Fund, than in subsidizing schools of this description.

Is it desirable to diminish the casualties which swell the sad records of our Marine Insurance Offices ? Would the underwriters at Lloyd's like to see the number of wrecks diminished by a certain notable annual percentage? Then one of the readiest ways to effect this is to improve the skill and knowledge of the seaman; to ameliorate his moral habits; to have fewer drunkards on board, since from that cause alone numerous ships run on the first shoal they near during a gale after leaving port; and to have men before the mast who can understand the master's instructions and act up to his orders with intelligence. Well, then, if this is to be done, let Government support the schools for boys; let the owners pay towards the Sailors' Schools of their ports; let Lloyd's contribute something towards them in every port of the kingdom; and let the Admiralty lend a hand, and draft off skilled teachers from Greenwich, who may be stationed all round our coasts for this laudable purpose.

At some of our largest ports, such as Liverpool, &c., schools of this kind do exist; and even a vessel is moored off the quays in which boys are received and trained.

But all this is not on. a scale of sufficient magnitude. For instance, in Liverpool alone it may be safely assumed' there are from 5,000 to 8,000 young boys available, all of whom might, by early training, be made into good apprentices and sailors; but the means of training are not for 5,000—they are not even for 5'00! And yet how muck better would it be for the interests of that port if, instead of picking up the scum of the streets, owners could always depend on a steady supply of boys, well taught and well disciplined for their ships I How well would it pay tiie Liverpool owners if they would, even at their own sole cost, provide means of education for the seafaring families of that enormously wealthy port! It may be objected by some, that Government is not averse to providing teachers for schools of this kind; and that the Committee of Council has even offered premiums for certificated masters who will act in this capacity. It is uncertain at present how many teachers have availed themselves of the encouragement thus held out; but the following specimen of what this encouragement is may be found in the ' Official Calendar' for 1862, issued by the Government, the only information known to be printed upon the subject:— "The certificate allowance will be dependent on the average number of bond-fide sailors—seamen and apprentices—who attend during 200 evenings in the year, and will be paid at the rate of 10s. per head of the average up to the maximum which the teacher is qualified to earn by the grade of his certificate.

The payments on results, which are •unlimited, are dependent on the number of prizes taken by the pupils when examined by the Inspector, and will be at the rate of os., 10s., and 11., according to the grade of the certificate." With all submission to the heads of the " Science and Art Department of the Committee of Council on Education," it is pretty clear that the above regulation was drawn up by some one not practically acquainted with maritime affairs. What! sailors and apprentices to attend' on shore two hundred evenings in the year 5 Tailors, not Sailors, should have been printed! Catch an ablebodied seaman or an apprentice on shore 200 days out of the 365! This is just the way in which a body of landsmen might be expected to attempt to work a seafaring institution; but it would be far better for the Government not to interfere with any of the details of the business, and to confine themselves to providing the teachers. It would also be better that either the Admiralty or the Board of Trade should take the matter in hand; and that only professional men should have the framing of any regulations affecting such a class of teachers.

All this sort of thing would be better managed by a board of practical navigators, not by one of landsmen, who may scarcely know a ship's head from her stern.

The peculiar kind of instruction to be given to young boys intended for sailors should turn mostly upon geometry and calculation, after the essential qualifications of good useful reading and writing are secured Arithmetical correctness and readiness are two points that should be most particularly attended to; not the faculty of working hard abstract problems, but that of handling tables of logarithms and numbers with perfection and certainty. In other words, sailor boy need not be troubled much with mercantile arithmetic; but he must be early and well grounded in his vulgar and decimal fractions. A knowledge of the properties of the principal geometrical figures may be imparted to a clear-headed boy, and even to one of moderate abilities, at an early age.

Boys like geometrical figures when they are not made too complicated, and when they see something useful in them. Without, therefore, taking a boy into anything like ' Euclid,' he may very well be grounded in an easy and elementary course of practical geometry, such as will stick by him when afloat, and will prepare the way for his advancing to trigonometry when he" begins his regular treatises on navigation. Nearly all the time which is now wasted by navigation teachers in preparing young seamen for their Norie, &c., might be saved if they had been taught a little geometry, and a good deal of decimals, when they were boys in school.

Besides this, an equally elementary and easy kind of geographical and astronomical instruction might be attempted. The subject, in the hands of clear, sensible teachers, might be made attractive; and, without trying at anything grand or fine—without pretending to any such nonsense as the "use of the globes," &c., the young sailor boy might be made to understand thoroughly the forms, the subdivisions, the climates, the products of the globe, the currents and tides of the ocean, the leading phenomena of the atmosphere, the winds, &c., and the motions of the heavenly bodies. It is true that the book, which is to serve them for a text in all this, has still to be written; but it can and it ought to be written, and its publication would be an event of importance for the young sailor population of the whole country.

THE CHAPLAIN TO THE ROYAL WELSH YACHT CLUB.