receive wages in all of four, five, or even six pounds a week, amounting in a year to more than the salary of many a doctor and clergyman. Yet there are cases of this sort in which the whole furniture of the house would be a dear purchase at thirty shillings! The writer has himself witnessed a room in a mining village, in which three whole families and one lodger lived, whose united earnings were upwards of £200 a year, and yet, though they were not drunkards when he saw them, none of them seemed to have the faintest idea of management; they had no elevated tastes; unmitigated huggermugger was their element. The gift of Midas-the power to turn everything to gold-would of itself be as great a curse to the working classes now, as it was to the King of Phrygia of old. Worthy old Mr. Shirra of Kirkcaldy had some reason to pray that God would "either give the folk o' Kirkcaldy less siller, or mair wit to guide it." We should deplore a process that would only increase the earnings of the working classes, without a parallel advance on their part in intelligence and worth. Let the two movements advance alongside of each other, and all will be well.

Therefore, we say in the second place, seek to advance in respect of intelligence. It would take a whole essay to tell the benefits which this will bring.

We do not speak merely of the many cases, such as that of Hugh Miller or of George Stephenson,— where a mind diligently cultivated has carried the working man into another sphere of society altogether, because the thing to be desired is not merely that individuals may rise above the general platform, but that the platform itself be raised. We would therefore ask you to observe how intelligence in a workman procures respect. We mean, when it is not marred by conceit or immorality, or other obnoxious quality, and when it does not carry him above his proper business, but makes him more able and skilful in it. Further, intelligence opens up many new pleasures to the working man. It is because he has so few pleasures, except those of a low animal kind, that the uncultivated workman is so apt to be caught by the coarsest bait the devil can put upon his hooks. Our lowest capacities of enjoyment don't depend on cultivation at all, but our highest do. The cultivated workman has capacities of enjoyment to which the uncultivated is dead. What pleasure may his books give him during the spare evening hour, or his paint-brush, or his flute. With hammer in hand he may go forth on his half-holiday, to search among the rocks for the creatures of an earlier world, or accompanied by his children, acquaint them, as well as himself, with the thousand

objects of interest that God has strewn by the roadside or the sea-shore. Then again, a spirit of intelligence or thirst for mental improvement among the working classes would increase greatly the intellectual wealth of the nation, both by elevating the whole platform, as we have just said, and by bringing forward those who have got from God the capacity to excel. Is there any ground for doubt, that among the working classes there is as much of the seeds or elements of mental power, as in any other order of society? Hitherto, with a few bright exceptions, the leading minds of the world have been drawn from the upper classes, our great

philosophers, historians, poets, statesmen, and so forth. Occasionally, minds of unwonted vigour and power have burst through the disadvantages of their situation, and

"Flamed in the forehead of the morning sky;"

but the more that intellectual culture is extended to all ranks of the community, the greater likelihood is there of such gifted minds being discovered and drawn out-of "village Hampdens" being placed where they may rally a community, and "mute inglorious Miltons" finding a voice to which the world will listen.

In the view of these and other things, the subject of popular or national education ought to excite a

very lively interest in the minds of working men. It is indeed singular that there should be so little interest among them on this subject. They seem almost everywhere content to take schools and teachers just as they find them; glad when they get them good; disappointed, but helpless, when they happen to be bad. It would be difficult to overvalue the influence which a thoroughly good system of national education must have on the intellectual elevation of future generations of the working classes, or to overstate the real interest which they have in everything that bears on elementary teaching, commodious schoolrooms, well-trained and well-stimulated teachers, skilful inspectors, superior lesson-books, all manner of happy devices for promoting the vigour, the cheerfulness, the ardour of the scholars. Subsidiary to such a system, but very useful in their own way, are apprentice schools and evening classes. We fear it will be long ere such institutions cease to be needed. Certainly there are multitudes of young men now, who, if they could only be induced to believe it, would be infinitely the better of the apprentice school. Unhappily, the Hector M'Neils are the exception, not the rule. Hector M'Neil was a lad, engaged some years ago as a labourer four miles out of Edinburgh, who showed such anxiety to attend the evening school,

that, in order to do so, he took lodgings in town, walked eight miles every day to and from his work, in the coldest season of the year, amid the frost and snow of winter, and was never once absent from school during a period of three months. Scotland, as long as it is Scotland, will never cease to furnish many striking instances of the pursuit of knowledge under difficulties; we only wish the thirst for intellectual culture were so universal, that no man, wishing to be counted a man, would be content to want it.

Last, but certainly not least, we would have the working classes to aim very steadily and earnestly at religious and moral elevation. We have placed this last in the order of enumeration, but let it ever be first in the order of practice. The starting-point in this race of improvement is a right relation to God. Rather, we may say, the starting-point in every course where solid and lasting improvement is to be found is a right relation to God. Suppose you bring a watch, in a very shattered state, to be repaired; its screws are loose, its wheels are bent, it is very dirty, and its mainspring is broken. What would you think of the watchmaker, if, after tightening the screws, evening the wheels, and cleaning the whole, he should deliver the watch to you with the mainspring still broken? Would it be worth the taking back? But a watch, with its mainspring