to him unprepared. Of course these various
views are taken from the outside only, pen-
and-ink sketches by hands ignorant of the real
nature of the class they assume to describe,
consequently more or less exaggerated, faulty, and
partial; but we have here, in a book lately
published,* a monograph of the working classes
by one of themselves, which speaks with clear
utterance, neither exaggerating nor extenuating.
This is the only satisfactory way in which
to write of him—from the inside of his
own world, not from the outside—showing
him as he is with all his short-comings as well
as his good qualities, neither as a modernised
Sir Galahad in fustian and a slop incapable of
a foul action: nor as a drunkard and a scoundrel
incapable of a noble one; not bristling
with melodramatic virtues making every-day
life impossible, nor hideous with melodramatic
vices making conscience and humanity a mere
dream of the imagination. Indeed, if he were
the melodramatic hero which certain publications,
more fanciful than accurate, set him forth
to be, he would be chaffed out of workshop
existence altogether; and would find what others
have found before now, that society resents
nothing so much as this kind of living over its
head, and that every one who wishes to stand
well with his world must be one with it, and
not be always attempting to put it in the wrong
by showing how much more in the right he is
himself. Confessed enmity is less offensive than
priggish superiority; and so the British workman
would find to his cost if he attempted to be
what some of his friends and flatterers say he is.

* Some habits and Customs of the Working
Classes. By a Journeyman Engineer. Tinsley
Brothers.

Now, as to the distinctive virtues of
working men—on the authority we quote—the
representative virtues of the class. They
have fortitude in trial, kindness to each
other, industry, honesty, intelligence; but they
are coarse and ignorant, and with neither
the just judgment nor the cultivation of
refinement. They can read, and they do read,
and sometimes they read to good purpose; but
the great mass of them read the least elevating
literature of the day for recreation, while their
politics are drawn from the sensational leaders
of their own special organs, often inflammatory,
unjust, and one-sided. The calm reasoning
of impartial judges annoys them far
more than it convinces. They know very little
of history, geography, natural history, or general
literature; and a working man who can write a
moderately good letter or a properly worded
address is a rarity, and is regarded as "a
scholard" by his mates. He is chosen as
the spokesman and penman of the community
in general, when they have anything special to
say or to write; but, as the journeyman engineer
very justly remarks, so great account would
not be made of a working man who could
write with ordinary propriety, were education
as general among them as it is assumed to be.

The great cause of this class-ignorance, says
our author, is the system of schooling. The
boys go too early to work, and after too hasty
and tight a system of cramming. They are
held to be scholars in all respects if they can
read and write, work the great horse-shoe and
nails sum, repeat whole chapters of the Bible
off book, give the history of English sovereigns
from the time of the Conquest to the accession of
Queen Victoria, mention the names and dates of
the biggest of our national battles, the names
of the highest mountain and the longest river,
tell the distance of the sun from the earth, and
perhaps have even a little smattering of Latin or
French. This is the sum of what they bring
away with them from school; but after they
have been at work for a few years, they forget
all these dry bones of knowledge, and seldom
substitute anything more useful. Very often,
too, that hard cramming system has been thrust
upon them with such a heavy hand, that they
become disgusted with books, even with works
of fiction, sensational or otherwise. The picture
of Laurestina, carried off by the wicked baron,
with her back hair down, and in the loveliest of
ball-dresses, does not rouse a desire in them to
learn the final catastrophe of that thrilling
romance. For Laurestina is reading—a pill coated
in sugar, if you like, but a pill all the same;
and experience has made them wary. It was
different when they were young, and while the
thirst for stories of adventure and love was
strong upon them. Had they been given their
run, then, of Laurestinas, more or less according
to nature, they would have perhaps learnt to
love an art which now they abhor; and even
penny literature is better than none at all, and
sensational romances are less objectionable than
gin-drinking and its consequences.

One result of this unsatisfactory kind of
education is to leave the working man ignorant,
and therefore a prey to flatterers, and unconscious
of his best friends. He believes all the rubbish
that may be talked about a bloated aristocracy
living on the sweat and blood of the people,
and so forth: as if the present were feudal times,
where was no right but might, and where
the poor had no justice and the rich no
restraint; and he believes all the frothy declamations
of professed agitators who get their bread
out of stump-oratory, and not by honest work;
but he dislikes the men who tell him unpalatable
truths, and mistrusts such friends as publishers—
for one example—who risk large sums
of money in publishing good class books at low-
class prices, chiefly and mainly for his benefit.
Truth-tellers and friends of this class do not
stand anywhere, in his estimation, near the
facile orator of the stump; but perhaps a
sounder education, and the habit of weighing
words and deeds against each other, might give
a power of better judgment on such matters;
and the working man, if once thoroughly well
educated, would be able to separate corn from
chaff, and to separate flattery from froth. The
want of that ability is one of the greatest
misfortunes of his condition.

Our friend, the journeyman engineer, has a