been in circumstances to attain its best graces and accomplishments, has a charm which many can feel who do not possess it. Only those do not imagine it who have no sense for the beautiful in action, and for the quiet expressiveness of complete cultivation. The perception of its value will not enable any man to reach it by dint of industry and talents. He must join to the tendencies, which are a gift from Heaven, the good fortune of long and familiar intercourse, even from his youth, with a circle of persons to whom finished politeness is habitual, and thus involuntary. In the highest classes there is many a man who has not this recommendation. But that, among persons of eminent social position, there is not a higher average of good manners, a milder general climate of demeanour, than among the mass of those whose main purpose in life is labour, however ingenious for outward ends—none but the very ignorant would be bold enough to pretend. How far this superiority is counterbalanced by inconveniences in other respects, moral or intellectual, is another question. The class that most commonly decides the matter in its own favour, viz. the clever and well-informed of the professional and mercantile rank, though probably they may be on the whole the best among us, are certainly by no means free from bias, or at all peculiarly aware of those defects of their own which must be weighed against the mischiefs of aristocratic habits. On the whole, no doubt, in the highest life of England, as compared with the middling, there is more of the smaller, and less of the larger morals. For leisure, and ample and constant means of enjoyment, are less favourable to virtue and wisdom than to manners and taste. Only, be it remembered, that good manners and good taste are, so far as their influence reaches, hostile, not friendly, to vice and folly.
22.
Evil in modern education, as in modern life, generally takes the form of meanness, weakness, and rottenness, in the substance and core, with a tricksy sensual varnish on the surface.
23.
While the labour and urgency of life are directed to mere worldly ends, the relaxations and ornaments will naturally also be governed by a taste for the showy and luxurious—for that which produces the utmost display with the least value.
24.
The striving of modern fashionable education is to make the character impressive; while the result of good education, though not the aim, would be to make it expressive.
25.
It would be unjust to deny that in our age there is a far wider diffusion of humanity, tolerance, information, smooth manners, and pleasing accomplishments, than there ever was before in the world. But this very improvement makes the task of life, and therefore of training life, more difficult. For these things are all the light and moveable material of manhood, not the vital organizing strength. Yet they have in themselves a reality of good, only it seems much greater than it is. We are thus tempted to make them substitutes for a law, a religion, which they in fact require in order to direct them. While these glimmerings of a higher truth augment and brighten round us, there is more and harder work for the conscience and will, for the main wheel of the character to do, in keeping right so much that was unknown in simpler times, and which yet in our time we have no business to relinquish.
26.
There is a tendency in modern education to cover the fingers with rings, and at the same time to cut the sinews at the wrist.
27.
No wonder that in the devil's market a large nut-shell, with a maggot in it, passes for more than a small one, which is whole and sound. That oranges are cultivated by his gardeners to have the finest skins and no juice. And in his picture galleries, frames inclosing nothing, and sheets of varnish, with no forms seen in them but the reflection of the spectator, hold the place of true delineations.
28.
One sometimes sees others than Irishmen, when they want to have a vehicle for use, make their barrow as large as possible, and fill it with a heap of goods, but only forget one thing—the wheel. Now, as a big wheel-barrow without a wheel, so is a man full
