Many, too, are deterred from undertaking congenial work by reason of the inadequate income to be derived therefrom, and the unsatisfactory prospects which it presents.  Let it suffice to mention the teaching profession, which fails to attract in any considerable numbers the right kind of men and women.  A large proportion of its members did not become teachers from deliberate choice, but, having failed in their attempt to secure other employment, were forced to betake themselves to the ever-open portals of the great Refuge for the Destitute, and become teachers (or, at least, become classified as such).  True there are a few “prizes” in the profession, and to some of the rude donati the Church holds out a helping hand; but the lay members cannot look forward even to the “congenial gloom of a Colonial Bishopric.”

Others, again, are attracted to employments (for which they may have no special aptitude) by the large salaries or profits which are to be earned therein, often with but little trouble or previous training—­or so, at least, they believe.  The idea of vocation is quite obscured, and a man’s occupation is in effect the shortest distance from poverty which he cannot endure, to wealth and leisure which he may not know how to use.

It frequently happens, too, that a young man is unable to afford either the time or the expense necessary to qualify for the profession which he desires to enter, and for which he is well adapted by his talents and temperament.  Not a few prefer in such circumstances to “play for safety,” and secure a post in the Civil Service.

It is plain from such considerations as these that all attempts to realise the Utopian ideal must needs be, for the present at least, but very partially successful.  Politics are not the only sphere in which “action is one long second-best.”  Even if it were possible at the present time to train each youth for that calling which his own gifts and temperament, or the reasoned judgment of his parents, selected as his life-work, it is very far from certain that he would ultimately find himself engaged therein.  English institutions are largely based on the doctrine of individual liberty, and those statutes which establish or safeguard individual rights are not unjustly regarded as the “bulwarks of the Constitution.”  But the inalienable right of a father to choose a profession for his son, or of the son to choose one for himself, is often exercised without any real inquiry into the conditions of success in the profession selected.  Hence the frequent complaints about the “overcrowding of the professions” either in certain localities or in the country at large.  The Bar affords a glaring example.  “There be many which are bred unto the law, yet is the law not bread unto them.”  The number of recruits which any one branch of industry requires in a single year is not constant, and, in some cases, is subject to great fluctuations; yet there are few or no statistics available for the guidance