men's' institutes, and idle men's' colleges? Or by what other word than 'idle' shall I distinguish those whom the happiest and wisest of working men do not object to call the 'Upper Classes?' Are there necessarily upper classes? necessarily lower? How much should those always be elevated, how much these always depressed? And I pray those among my audience who chance to occupy, at present, the higher position, to forgive me what offence there may be in what I am going to say. It is not I who wish to say it. Bitter voices say it; voices of battle and of famine through all the world, which must be heard some day, whoever keeps silence. Neither, as you well know, is it to you specially that I say it. I am sure that most now present know their duties of kindness, and fulfil them, better perhaps than I do mine. But I speak to you as representing your whole class, which efrs, I know, chiefly by thoughtlessness, but not therefore the less terribly. Wilful error is limited by the will, but what limit is there to that of which we are unconscious?

19. Bear with me, therefore, while I turn to these workmen, and ask them, what they think the upper classes' are, and ought to be, in relation to them. Answer, you workmen who are here, as you would among yourselves, frankly; and tell me how you would have me call your employers. Am

I to call them—would you think me right in calling them-the idle classes? I think you would feel somewhat uneasy, and as if I were not treating my subject honestly, or speaking from my heart, if I proceeded in my lecture under the supposition that all rich people were idle. You would be both unjust and unwise if you allowed me to say that ;not less unjust than the rich people, who say that all the poor are idle, and will never work if they can help it, or more than they can help.

x 20.* For indeed the fact is, that there are idle poor, and idle rich; and there are busy poor, and busy rich. Many a beggar is as lazy as if he had ten thousand a year; and many a man of large fortune is busier than his errand-boy, and never would think of stopping in the street to play marbles. So that, in a large view, the distinction between workers and idlers, as between knaves and honest men, runs through the very heart and innermost nature of men of all ranks and in all positions. There is a working class-strong and happy,—among both rich and poor; there is an idle class-weak, wicked, and miserable,―among both rich and poor. And the worst of the misunderstandings arising between the

Note this paragraph. I cannot enough wonder at the want of common charity which blinds so many people to the quite simple truth to which it refers.

two orders come of the unlucky fact that the wise of one class [how little wise in this!] habitually contemplate the foolish of the other. If the busy rich people watched and rebuked the idle rich people, all would be right among them: and if the busy poor people watched and rebuked the idle poor people, all would be right among them. But each look for the faults of the other. A hardworking man of property is particularly offended by an idle beggar; and an orderly, but poor, workman is naturally intolerant of the licentious luxury of the rich. And what is severe judgment in the minds of the just men of either class, becomes fierce enmity in the unjust-but among the unjust only. None but the dissolute among the poor look upon the rich as their natural enemies, or desire to pillage their houses and divide their property. None but the dissolute among the rich speak in opprobrious terms of the vices and follies of the poor.

21. There is, then, no worldly distinction between. idle and industrious people; and I am going to-night to speak only of the industrious. The idle people we will put out of our thoughts at once-they are mere nuisances-what ought to be done with them, we'll talk of at another time. But there are class distinctions among the industrious themselves;-tremendous distinctions, which rise and fall to every degree in the

infinite thermometer of human pain and of human power, distinctions of high and low, of lost and won, to the whole reach of man's soul and body.

22. These separations we will study, and the laws of them, among energetic men only, who, whether they work or whether they play, put their strength into the work, and their strength into the game; being in the full sense of the word 'industrious,' one way or another, with purpose, or without. And these distinctions are mainly four:

I. Between those who work, and those who play. II. Between those who produce the means of life, and those who consume them.

III. Between those who work with the head, and those who work with the hand.

IV. Between those who work wisely, and who work foolishly.

For easier memory, let us say we are going to oppose, in our examination,

I. Work to play ;

II. Production to consumption;

III. Head to hand; and,

IV. Sense to nonsense.

23. I. First, then, of the distinction between the classes who work and the classes who play. Of course we must agree upon a definition of these terms, work and play, before going farther. Now,

roughly, not with vain subtlety of definition, but for plain use of the words, 'play' is an exertion of body or mind, made to please ourselves, and with no determined end; and work is a thing done because it ought to be done, and with a determined end. You play, as you call it, at cricket, for instance. That is as hard work as anything else; but it amuses you, and it has no result but the amusement. If it were done as an ordered form of exercise, for health's sake, it would become work directly. So, in like manner, whatever we do to please ourselves, and only for the sake of the pleasure, not for an ultimate object, is 'play,' the 'pleasing thing,' not the useful thing. Play may be useful, in a secondary sense; (nothing is indeed more useful or necessary); but the use of it depends on its being spontaneous.

24. Let us, then, enquire together what sort of games the playing class in England spend their lives in playing at.

The first of all English games is making money. That is an all-absorbing game; and we knock each other down oftener in playing at that, than at football, or any other roughest sport: and it is absolutely without purpose; no one who engages heartily in that game ever knows why. Ask a great moneymaker what he wants to do with his money,-he