Letter 25.

Of inevitable Distinction of Rank, and necessary Submis sion to Authority.-The Meaning of Pure-Hearted ness.

Conclusion.

I was interrupted yesterday, just as I was going to set my soldiers to work; and to-day, here comes the pamphlet you promised me, containing the Debates about Church-going, in which I find so interesting a text for my concluding letter that I must still let my soldiers stand at ease for a little while. Look at its twenty-fifth page, and you will find, in the speech of Mr. Thomas (carpenter), this beautiful explanation of the admitted change in the general public mind, of which Mr. Thomas, for his part, highly approves (the getting out of the unreasonable habit of paying respect to anybody). There were many reasons to Mr. Thomas's mind why the working classes did not attend places of worship; one was, that "the parson was regarded as an object of reverence. In the little town he came from, if a poor man did not make a bow to the parson he was a marked man. This was no doubt wearing away to a great extent" (the base habit of

making bows), "because, the poor man was beginning to get education, and to think for himself. It was only while the priest kept the press from him that he was kept ignorant, and was compelled to bow, as it were, to the parson.... It was the case all over England. The clergyman seemed to think himself something superior. Now he (Mr. Thomas) did not admit there was any inferiority" (laughter, audience throughout course of meeting mainly in the right), "expect, perhaps, on the score of his having received a classical education, which the poor man could not get."

Now, my dear friend, here is the element which is the veriest devil of all that have got into modern flesh; this infidelity of the nineteenth-century St. Thomas in there. Deing anything better than himself, alive; coupled, as it always is, with the farther resolution-if unwillingly con vinced of the fact-to seal the Better living thing down again out of his way, under the first stone handy. I had not intended, till we entered on the second section of our inquiry, namely, into the influence of gentleness (having hitherto, you see, been wholly concerned with that of justice), to give you the clue out of our dilemma about equalities produced by education; but by this speech of our superior carpenter's, I am driven into it at once, and t is perhaps as well.

The speech is not, observe, without its own roɔt of truth at the bottom of it, nor at all, as I think, ill intend ed by the speaker; but you have in it a clear instance of what I was saying in the sixteenth of these letters,—that education was desired by the lower orders because they thought it would make them upper orders, and be a leveller and effacer of distinctions. They will be mightily astonished, when they really get it, to find that it is, on the contrary, the fatallest of all discerners and enforcers of distinctions; piercing, even to the division of the joints and marrow, to find out wherein your body and soul. are less, or greater, than other bodies and souls, and to sign deed of separation with unequivocal seal.

Education is, indeed, of all differences not divinely appointed, an instant effacer and reconciler. Whatever is undivinely poor, it will make rich; whatever is undi vinely maimed, and halt, and blind, it will make whole, and equal, and seeing. The blind and the lame are to it as to David at the siege of the Tower of the Kings, "hated of David's soul." But there are other divinelyappointed differences, eternal as the ranks of the everlasting hills, and as the strength of their ceaseless waters. And these, education does not do away with; but measures, manifests, and employs.

In the handful of shingle which you gather froin the

sea-beach, which the indiscriminate sea, with equality of fraternal foam, has only educated to be, every one, round, you will see little difference between the noble and mean stones. But the jeweller's trenchant education of them will tell you another story. Even the meanest will be better for it, but the noblest so much better that you can class the two together no more. The fair veins and colours are all clear now, and so stern is Nature's intent regarding this, that not only will the polish show which is best, but the best will take the most polish. You shall not merely see they have more virtue than the others, but see that more of virtue more clearly; and the less virtue there is, the more dimly you shall see what there is of it.

And the law about education, which is sorrowfullest to to vulgar pride, is this that all its gains are at com pound interest; so that, as our work proceeds, every hour throws us farther behind the greater men with whom we began on equal terms. Two children go to school hand in hand, and spell for half an hour over the same page. Through all their lives, never shall they spell from the same page more. One is presently a page ahead,-two pages, ten pages, and evermore, though each toils equally, the interval enlarges at birth nothing, at death, infinite.

And by this you may recognise true education from

false. False education is a delightful thing, and warms

you,

and makes you every day think more of yourself And true education is a deadly cold thing, with a Gorgon's head on her shield, and makes you every day think worse of yourself.

Worse in two ways, also, more's the pity. It is perpetually increasing the personal sense of ignorance and the personal sense of fault. And this last is the truth. which is at the bottom of the common evangelical notions about conversion, and which the Devil has got hold of, and hidden, until, instead of seeing and confessing personal ignorance and fault, as compared with the sense and virtue of others, people see nothing but corruption in human nature, and shelter their own sins under accusation of their race (the worst of all assertions of equality and fraternity). And so they avoid the blessed and strengthening pain of finding out wherein they are fools, as compared with other men, by calling everybody else a fool too; and avoid the pain of discerning their own faults, by vociferously claiming their share in the great capital of original sin.

I must also, therefore, tell you here what properly ought to have begun the next following section of our subject the point usually unnoticed in the parable of the Prodigal Son.