ABSTRACT
Yet, certainly, if we only looked around us it might seem a most Utopian dream. If we judged of what can be done by what has hitherto been done, we should pronounce it impossible that the lower half of our population could ever receive either cultivation or civilization, we should conclude that things must remain always as they have so long continued, and that a small number of cultivated men will always live in England in the midst of a vast half-barbarous population.We should think ourselves happy that this half-barbarous multitude belongs to the better class of barbarians, that it is hard-working, tolerably honest and good-natured, and that its worst faults are narrowness and dulness. What higher hopes could we form if we looked at the lower section of the middle class, and
marked the small traces left upon the ordinary Englishman by several years of education? He has all the good qualities that nature gave him; he is industrious, conscientious, benevolent, persevering. But what remains to him of his education? What marks him out as civilized? Has he any high or liberal pleasures? Has he any intellectual dignity, any breadth of view? Does he ever generalize, ever philosophize? Has he any worthy end in life, any ideal? Or does he creep and labour, and ‘discuss the sewage question,’ and provide for his family?
