Page:On Secondary Instruction, as relating to Girls.djvu/7

 power and disposition to affirm itself, not at all the power and disposition to transform itself." Here again, we are reaping what our fathers have sown. A young man of the middle class, who enters upon life with generous instincts and aspirations after perfection, is apt gradually to lose them. He becomes day by day less public-spirited, more engrossed by selfish aims. The more home-loving he is, the more likely is this to be the case. In his best moments, where is he to look for sympathy? His highest thoughts and feelings cannot be shared by those nearest and dearest to him. Any expression of them is likely to be met by a blank, uncomprehending stare. If there is any question of a small sacrifice to be made for the good of his town or parish, he is advised against it. That his first duty is to think of his children, or, in other words, always to make the aggrandisement of his own family his primary consideration, is a maxim about which his wife feels not the slightest doubt, and which she never fails to impress upon him. In the home circle, the conversation is inevitably restricted to petty subjects. The master of the house may discourse upon politics, or literature, or any other topic that may interest him, but there can be no intelligent response, no interchange of thought, no pleasant discussion of things worth talking about. He may lay down the law on matters of which he knows nothing whatever, betraying the grossest ignorance of elementary facts, in full confidence that his conclusions, whether true or false, will be accepted with equal indifference. He will learn unconsciously, but very surely, that the great thing for him to do is to stick to his business, think of nothing else, talk of nothing else, aspire after nothing else. Making money and getting on in the world by means of it, are things that his wife and his mother and his daughters can understand and care for. They know all about the advantages of having a carriage and servants, and "a position," and plenty of money to do what they like with. If he wants to please them, the way is plain. It may not be the way he would have chosen. He may have had unselfish impulses, some "aptitude for ideas," some longings after a nobler career. But a fire which for fuel is perpetually fed with cold water, soon dies out. The man who was teachable, impressible, growing,—hardens into the mere man of business, worldly-minded, narrow-hearted, self-satisfied. I do not mean this statement to be taken in a universal sense. Of course it is sometimes the other way. The wife is cultivated and aspiring, and the husband drags her down. But I believe I have given a tolerably accurate account of the tendencies in the great mass of English homes of the middle class.

Why should this unsatisfactory state of things be allowed to continue? Why should not our English homes be animated by a spirit of truth and of sacrifice—pervaded by an atmosphere of light and warmth in which all high thoughts and generous impulses should live and grow, all mean and selfish ends be, by common consent, disowned and utterly renounced? Why might not the family circle be a place where "example teacheth, company comforteth, emulation