he takes chambers in the Temple, and reads law as a preparation for political life, he has to withstand a host of temptations to idleness, to dissipation, and to vice. Contact with some of the ablest young men in the country, soon tells him also that nothing short of eight or ten hours' hard work a day for years will put him on an intellectual level with his plebeian rivals. The prizes for which those men struggle at the bar, or in Parliament, are so brilliant, that, in sporting phrases, the 'pace' is tremendous; and if a young fellow has a title, an assured position in society, a handsome allowance from his father, and the certainty of falling heir to some thousands a year, we cannot wonder that he declines to work like a dray horse in King's Bench Walk, Inner Temple, or in the committee rooms of the House of Commons. Nor can we wonder that his ambition lessens with advancing years. If at twenty he aims at the premiership, at twenty-two his ambition is very likely to soar no higher than a secretaryship of state. At twenty-five it may have come down to a junior lordship of the admiralty, whose chief duty is 'to cheer the minister. At thirty it is, perhaps, content with a seat for one of the family boroughs, and with the prospect of place at some future time when billiards shall have lost their charm, and a blue-book shall have more fascination than the Racing Calendar. So, between late hours, brandy and seltzer, Pall Mall and Newmarket, the chances are that the son of a duke, instead of going to the Treasury bench, will go to a very different sort of place.

That is one of the merciful provisions by which nature guards the poor multitude against the tyranny of the rich few. Nothing is more clear than that, in the long run, circumstances make men. Take a thousand men of equal ability: put five hundred to the blacksmith's

forge, so that their muscles shall be exercised all day long, and their brains never; put the other five hundred into a philosophical class room, or the House of Commons, so that their wits shall be sharpened by constant practice; and if no malign influence come in to defeat the experiment, a few years will place as great a difference between the ability of the hand-workers and the brain-workers as there is between a mechanic and a North American Indian. Nor will the distance remain stationary. Day by day it will grow; for while intellectual work affords a constant stimulus to mental development, manual labour stimulates only up to a certain point. Manual work demands thought during the process of learning, and then becomes mechanical. The intellectual benefit which a skilled mechanic reaps from his toil is mostly got during the years of apprenticeship, and not during the years when the hand has become attuned to obey the impulses of the mind with the regularity of a machine. Nor does even that fact measure the disadvantages of toil. The children of the blacksmiths will not start on an intellectual level with the children of the thinkers, though the two sets of parents were originally equal in natural endowments. Physiology has left no doubt that the one class will begin life with a much finer intellectual fibre than the other; with a better-made, better-oiled, more powerful brain-machine. And even if that fact be denied, an incontestible and hardly less signal advantage rests with the scholarly families. The blacksmiths on the one hand, and the thinkers on the other, have been generating an atmosphere of ideas: but while the ideas of the one are poor and closely connected with the anvil, those of the other are a mighty crowd, rich, subtle, highly organised, and running up into every crevice of human

life. In each case they form links of association with problems which the full grown man has to solve; they are seeds which will fructify and grow under the heat of active life; they are the primary materials with which thought is to work. Hence by the time that the children of the five hundred blacksmiths and the children of the five hundred students begin the task of formal education, they are already separated by a mighty intellectual distance. The one set understand nothing beyond the forge, and if a thoughtful book be put into their hands, they have not light enough in their own minds to see its meaning. The other set are so richly dowered with links of association, that they easily find their way through intellectual labyrinths in which their poor relatives would be hopelessly lost. Since they possess the materials of thought in abundance, the suggestion of an event, or a word, or a sound, or an image, leads them, as if by instinct, to fresh ideas, which, in turn, form new starting points. Hence, if no malign influence check the growth of those men, they will reach a higher mental stature than their fathers; and, in like manner, their children will attain a higher stature than themselves.

Now, brain-power rules in despite of laws passed to handicap it in the race with mediocrity; and since the offspring of our five hundred students would always be growing more able than the children of our five hundred blacksmiths, it follows that, in the absence of any malign influence, we should in time have aristocracy which should be the lord and master of the inferior caste which should hardly need to challenge obedience, seeing that its vast superiority would be so legibly written on every high road that the wayfaring man, even though he were a fool, could not fail to see it; and which would ulti

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mately yield to the natural passion for power, by reducing the inferior grade to the rank of serfs. That is what every aristocracy would be obliged to do if it could economise all the power latent in its nature and communicated by its position. Fortunately it is equal to no such feat. A merciful dispensation of Providence ordains that out of every favoured class a large proportion shall every year go to the mischief. Thus other men get a chance of rising. Thus society becomes a series of moral buckets, the one set going up as the other set comes down. Aristocracy is like a magnificent stable, with all the appliances for turning out winners of the Derby, the Oaks, the St. Leger, the Cambridgeshire, and every other big race; with fine-looking colts picked up at Middle Park, with John Days for trainers and Challoners for jockeys. But somehow, one colt catches cold; another breaks a blood-vessel; a third falls a victim to the arts of a scoundrel who mixes ground glass with its corn; a fourth is poisoned by the stable-boy; a fifth drinks too much; a sixth is so fond of play that it breaks its knees; and so on throughout the series, until horse after horse has to be scratched,' and only a sorry couple struggle round Tattenham Corner on the Derby Day.

In no state of society, therefore, could an hereditary aristocracy continue to produce the natural leaders of the people. And the more that society advances the more hard it is for the nobles to hold their ground against plebeian upstarts. With social progress comes a host of new openings for energy. Trade, manufactures, literature, and science all spur the plebeian to put forth his utmost ability; and first, they reward him with wealth or fame, and then with political power. First they are despised as too vulgar to enlist the energies of the noble; then they grow into a mighty

power which exacts official recognition; and thus they create new orders of aristocracy, each of which competes with the hereditary class, and each of which is built on those personal qualities that rule the earth. In our days an aristocracy may still retain its titles, its places at court, its claims to social homage, its position as an estate of the realm, and even the landed possessions of more than half a country; but it cannot wield a thousandth part of its old power. That power is for ever shattered. In this country the day is not far off when that power will be only a tradition; when, as a class, the nobles shall again be merged in the

ranks of the people, and when the influence of each shall be measured by the nature of his personal qualities and the extent of his possessions. The revolution will, in all probability, be slow and peaceable, but none the less will it be complete. Those who rail against the social and political forces which are working the change might as hopefully rail against the law of gravitation.

So far I have been dealing chiefly with the general character of the change which is coming over this conntry. In another article I will endeavour to describe the various classes in the ranks of Young England,' who are striving either to quicken or to retard that change.

M.