for their own bread—­even people in trade; and it is beginning to be perceived that their amusements—­also, which seems the last straw, their vices—­can actually be enjoyed by the base mechanical sort, insomuch that, if this kind of thing goes on, there must in the end follow an effacement of all classes, and the peer will walk arm and arm with the blacksmith.  But class distinctions die hard, and the working men are not yet all ready for the disciplined recreation which will help to break down the barriers, and we may not look for this millennium within the lifetime of living men.  It is enough to note that the old feeling still lingers even among those who, a hundred years ago, when class distinctions were in their worst and most odious form, would have been ranked among those incapable of refinement and ignorant of polite manners.

The third objection, that the people should only be helped in the way of education and self-improvement, is, at first sight, worthy of respect.  But it involves the theory that it is the duty of the working man when he has done his day’s work to devote his evenings to more work of a harder kind.  There is a kind of hypocrisy in this feeling.  Why should the working man be fired with that ardour for knowledge which is not expected of ourselves?  I look round among my own acquaintances and friends, and I declare that I do not know a single household, except where the head of it is a literary man, and therefore obliged to be always studying and learning, in which the members spend their evenings after the day’s work in the acquisition of new branches of learning.  One may go farther:  even of those who belong to the learned professions, few indeed there are who carry on their studies beyond the point where their knowledge has a marketable value.  The doctor learns his craft as thoroughly as he can, and, after he has passed, reads no more than is just necessary to keep his eyes open to new lights; the solicitor knows enough law to carry on his business, and reads no more.  As for the schoolmaster—­who ever heard of a classical master reading any more Latin and Greek than he reads with the boys? and who ever heard of a mathematical master keeping up his knowledge of the higher branches, which put him among the wranglers of his year, but are not wanted in the school?  Even the lads who have just begun to go into the City, and who know very well that their value would be enormously increased by a practical and real knowledge of French, German, or shorthand, will not take the trouble to acquire it.  Yet, with the knowledge of all this, we expect the working man in his hours of leisure, and after a day physically exhausting, to sit down and work at something intellectual.  There are, without doubt, some men so strong and so avid of knowledge that they will do this, but these are not many, and they do not long remain working men.