Page:A short history of social life in England.djvu/391

Rh influences of the century. The children were dressed in uniform so as to show that they were objects of benevolence, and they were frequently reminded of their low estate, their moral ideal being summed up in the couplet:

All State-aided schools have been inspected since the early forties, but the small band of early Government Inspectors had their hands full. In 1849 they had 681 certified teachers and 3,580 pupil-teachers to inspect, but these very teachers, whose duty it was to train and teach the children of the poor, were but "the refuse of other callings." Their ranks were swelled by discarded servants and ruined tradesmen, "who do not know whether the earth is a cube or a sphere, whom no gentleman would trust with the key of his cellar and no tradesman would entrust with a message"—men and women who, from some defect of body or health, were driven from the rougher struggles of muscular toil—consumptives in the last stages of disease, out-door paupers, or persons of over seventy years of age. None were too old, too sickly, too feeble, or too ignorant to regard themselves as fit for