A STUDY OF BRITISH GENIUS. 547 



for development, while at the same time they have not been able to dis- 

 pense them from the necessity of work. Thus, at all events, it has been 

 in the past. How it will be in the future is a question which the 

 data before us in no way help to answer. So far as can be seen, the 

 changing conditions of life have as yet made no change in the conditions 

 required for producing genius. Life in the old towns formerly fertile 

 in intellectual ability — towns like Edinburgh, Norwich, Bury St. Ed- 

 munds and Plymouth — was altogether unlike life in our modern urban 

 centers, and there is yet no sign that the latter will equal the former in 

 genius-producing power. Nor is there any sign that the education of 

 the proletariat will lead to a new development of eminent men; the 

 lowest class in Great Britain, so far as the data before us show, has not 

 exhibited any recent tendency to a higher yield of genius, and what 

 production it is accountable for remains rural rather than urban. 



