tunity in our towns, to cultivate a taste for flowers. Could we achieve it, we should attach a garden to every working man's house.1 It is touching to mark the strange devices by which in towns we see the pursuit of floriculture under difficulties. "And they that never pass their brick-wall bounds The reading of newspapers is now very common among the working classes. Necessary though it be for every intelligent person to glance at their contents, and ably though many of their articles are written, we should never advise any one to make them the chief part of his reading. While they gratify our curiosity as to the events of the passing hour, and while they often aid us in forming opinions, and direct us as to the controversies and questions of the day, they rather dissipate than discipline our minds; the knowledge they impart is desultory and fragmentary, and they hardly even profess to stimulate us to our most difficult and important duties. 1 As is done in the Pilrig Model Buildings. Magazines and similar periodicals have a higher aim; but even in regard to them, a careful selection needs to be made, and a conscientious control exercised. Good instruction and good writing, combined with a high moral aim and a religious tone, form the beau idéal of an ordinary magazine. For Sunday reading, there are periodicals where the solid and the attractive elements are admirably blended; and where the food provided for the young is such as may well induce them to call the Sabbath a delight. We have joined "recreation" to "reading" in the title of this chapter, rather to denote the light in which we would have the working classes to regard reading, than as the text for a separate disquisition. Though reading, to those who have a taste for it, is, in one sense, the best of recreations, it has not the same pre-eminence in another. Recreations must be of two sorts-social as well as solitary; and of these the social are even more important than the solitary. In recreation, most men court society. It is very seldom that children play alone, if by any means they can have companions in their sport; and there, as in other things, the boy is father of the man. For recreation, more than anything else, we crave the brightening influence of the faces of our friends. The friction of brain upon brain, and of heart upon heart, is needed to strike out the wit and the glow that we crave in our hours of unbending. And no theory of recreation can be satisfactory which leaves out the social element. But it is here that the greatest danger of the working man lies. It is the craving for cheerful society in his hours of relaxation that has occasioned the fall of nine-tenths of those who have become drunkards. As Burns says— "Social mirth and glee sit down, All joyous and unthinking; Till quite transmogrified they're grown It is Unquestionably, the greatest snare of the working man lies in the habit of associating intoxicating drink with all methods of social recreation. one of the great problems of the day, how to have, for the masses, true social recreation without intoxicating drink. The day may come when, as a general rule, they shall have such self-control as to be able, even in the presence of the tempter, to keep within safe limits. Till that day comes, the only safe rule must be, "Touch not, taste not, handle not." Keep away intoxicating fire, and you may with safety enlarge the circle of social relaxations. Let the taste for music be more cultivated, and let there be more music in working men's homes. Let there be more out-door sports, and more in-door games. As for public amusements, discrimination must be exercised. It is too apparent, that many of our public places of amusement are, nurseries of irregularity and vice. in practice, only It is very desir It is able that social recreations should be of a domestic character. If HOME could but become, to both old and young, another name for a scene of refreshment and happiness, in which from time to time a few friends and their children might be asked to join, the more objectionable places of amusement would come to a discount, or would be forced to change their character. It is interesting to find what good effects on the masses the opening to them on certain nights of the week of the public industrial museums at South Kensington has had. Thousands of the working classes go there with their families, and find both pleasure and profit in examining the objects of interest that are submitted for their inspection. One of the most interesting results of this experiment has been the severance of rational social enjoyment from intoxication. A refreshment-room is on the premises, where the usual beverages are sold; but so little are they patronized, that, by a calculation of averages, each person who visited the museum had only two-and-a-half drops of wine, one-twentysixth drop of brandy, and ten-and-a-half drops of bottled ale. The tavern, as a working printer remarked, in giving evidence on this subject to a committee of the House of Commons, is the public institution which is most patronized by the working classes. It is requisite, if the tavern is to sink, that rivals be created to the public-house, not only not of a pernicious, but of a positively elevating tendency. Refreshment rooms, where still higher attractions than those of the tavern shall be found, without its temptations, are imperatively demanded by the present age. It is hardly possible to conceive anything worse than the tavern, and the other institutions that are usually connected with it. Should society improve, the improvement will be attended by a gradual elevation of popular recreations, till at last, the Christian spirit becoming everywhere predominant, no recreation shall be sought where the Divine presence may not be enjoyed, and in their very amusements men shall learn to do all to the glory of God. |