democracy, more thoroughly calculated to raise modern democracy to heights which other forms of government and older orderings of society have never yet attained.  No movement can be more wisely democratic than one which seeks to give to the northern miner or the London artisan knowledge as good and as accurate, though he may not have so much of it, as if he were a student at Oxford or Cambridge.  Something of the same kind may be said of the new frequency with which scholars of great eminence and consummate accomplishments, like Jowett, Lang, Myers, Leaf, and others, bring all their scholarship to bear, in order to provide for those who are not able, or do not care, to read old classics in the originals, brilliant and faithful renderings of them in our own tongue.  Nothing but good, I am persuaded, can come of all these attempts to connect learning with the living forces of society, and to make industrial England a sharer in the classic tradition of the lettered world.

I am well aware that there is an apprehension that the present extraordinary zeal for education in all its forms—­elementary, secondary, and higher—­may bear in its train some evils of its own.  It is said that before long nobody in England will be content to practise a handicraft, and that every one will insist on being at least a clerk.  It is said that the moment is even already at hand when a great deal of practical distress does and must result from this tendency.  I remember years ago that in the United States I heard something of the same kind.  All I can say is, that this tendency, if it exists, is sure to right itself.  In no case can the spread of so mischievous a notion as that knowledge and learning ought not to come within reach of handicraftsmen be attributed to literature.  There is a familiar passage in which Pericles, the great Athenian, describing the glory of the community of which he was so far-shining a member, says, “We at Athens are lovers of the beautiful, yet simple in our tastes; we cultivate the mind without loss of manliness.”  But then remember that after all Athenian society rested on a basis of slavery.  Athenian citizens were able to pursue their love of the beautiful, and their simplicity, and to cultivate their minds without loss of manliness, because the drudgery and hard work and rude service of society were performed by those who had no share in all these good things.  With us, happily, it is very different.  We are all more or less upon a level.  Our object is—­and it is that which in my opinion raises us infinitely above the Athenian level—­to bring the Periclean ideas of beauty and simplicity and cultivation of the mind within the reach of those who do the drudgery and the service and rude work of the world.  And it can be done—­do not let us be afraid—­it can be done without in the least degree impairing the skill of our handicraftsmen or the manliness of our national life.  It can be done without blunting or numbing the practical energies of our people.