They had, therefore, something in mind very different from sitting for an hour in presence of a dozen students, hearing them recite a lesson, saying then, “Ite, missa est,” and departing all, every man to his own way.  They foresaw their difficulties, undoubtedly, and they have undoubtedly met some which they did not foresee.  But they meant to establish, on paper, if nowhere else, a mutual society,—­a society, it is true, in which those who knew the most should teach those who knew the least, but still a society where the learners and the teachers met as members of the same fraternity,—­equals so far as the laws of that society went,—­and with certain common interests arising from their connection with it.

Not only does the necessity for such an undertaking appear in England as it does not here, but the difficulty of it is, on a moderate calculation, ten thousand times greater than it is here.  Here, in the first place, if the “working-man” as a boy has felt any particular fancy for algebra or Greek or Latin, (and those fancies, in a fast country, are apt to develop before the boy is eighteen,) he has e’en gone to a high-school, and, if he wanted, to a “college,” where, if he had not the means himself, some State Scholarship or Education Society has floated him through, and he has gained his fill of algebra, Latin, or Greek, or is on the way to do so.  Or, if he have not done this,—­if the appetite for these things, or for physical science, historical science, or political science, has developed itself a little later in life, he has hoarded up books for a few years, and has made himself meanwhile rather more necessary to his master than he was before, so that, when he says, some day, “I think we must arrange so that I can leave the shop earlier in the afternoon,” the master has bowed submiss, and the incipient chemist, historian, or politician has worked his own sweet will.  Or, thirdly, if he wanted instruction from anybody in the category we first named, who had tried the high-school and college plan, he had only to go and ask for it.

Very likely the man is his brother; at all events, he is somebody’s brother:  and there is no difference in their social status which makes any practical difficulty in their meeting together, man-fashion, to teach and to learn.  But in saying all this, we speak of things which London understands no more than it does the system of society of the Chinese Empire.  To begin:  the thriving Oxford-Street retailer will tell you very frankly, perhaps, that he had rather his son should not learn to read, if he could only sign his name without learning.  Reason:  that the father has observed that his older son read so much more of bad than good, that he is left to doubt the benefits conferred by letters.  I do not mean, that, practically, the London tradesman’s son does not learn to read; but I do mean that that process meets this sort of prejudice.  Grant, however, that he does learn to read, and has appetite