the desire to read books; partly, as I said above, we have done it for them, because we have never taken any steps to create the demand.  Now, as regards these arts and accomplishments, the public schoolman and the better class City clerk have the chance of learning some of them at least, and of practising them, both before and after they have left school.  What a poor creature would that young man seem who could do none of these things!  Yet the working man has no chance of learning any.  There are no teachers for him; the schools for the small arts, the accomplishments, and the graces of life are not open to him; one never hears, for instance, of a working man learning to waltz or dance, unless it is in imitation of a music-hall performer.  In other words, the public schoolman has gone through a mill of discipline out of school as well as in.  Law reigns in his sports as in his studies.  Whether he sits over his books or plays in the fields, he learns to be obedient to law, order, and rule:  he obeys, and expects to be obeyed; it is not himself whom he must study to please:  it is the whole body of his fellows.  And this discipline of self, much more useful than the discipline of books, the young workman knows not.  Worse than this, and worst of all, not only is he unable to do any of these things, but he is even ignorant of their uses and their pleasures, and has no desire to learn any of them, and does not suspect at all that the possession of these accomplishments would multiply the joys of life.  He is content to go on without them.  Now contentment is the most mischievous of all the virtues; if anything is to be done, and any improvement is to be effected, the wickedness of discontent must first be explained away.

Let us, if you please, brighten this gloomy picture by recognising the existence of the artisan who pursues knowledge for its own sake.  There are many of this kind.  You may come across some of them botanizing, collecting insects, moths and butterflies in the fields on Sundays; others you will find reading works on astronomy, geometry, physics, or electricity:  they have not gone through the early training, and so they often make blunders; but yet they are real students.  One of them I knew once who had taught himself Hebrew; another, who read so much about co-operation, that he lifted himself clean out of the co-operative ranks, and is now a master; another and yet another and another, who read perpetually, and meditate upon, books of political and social economy; and there are thousands whose lives are made dignified for them, and sacred, by the continual meditation on religious things.  Let us make every kind of allowance for these students of the working class; and let us not forget, as well, the occasional appearance of those heaven-born artists who are fain to play music or die, and presently get into orchestras of one kind or another, and so leave the ranks of daily labour and join the great clan or caste of musicians, who are a race or family apart, and carry on their mystery from father to son.