RESPECTING RUBBISH. 97 



lai" education — an age when people have been taught to expect con- 

 stantly new advances, and, in a rough kind of way, even to approciate 

 the enjoyment of an intellectual change of air. But though this love 

 of change may be appropriate to a state of progress, we must remember, 

 after all, that it is most inappropriate to a state of knowledge. The 

 condition of the highest knowledge is the condition of least surprise. 

 The more we have that is real to lean upon the less excuse there will 

 be for this straining and craning of the neck after startling intellectual 

 novelties. Even now we are sure that the tendency to grasp at new 

 ideas is often fatal, not merely to the utilization of old truths, but to 

 the mere holding of the ground which had been gained by' our ances- 

 tors. All this razing to the earth of the moral and religious beliefs of 

 former days is far more loss to man than the best of the new glimpses 

 of truth are gain. And, indeed, the tendency is to eradicate the tem- 

 per of repose, the heart of confidence in what has been gained, and to 

 substitute for it a constant reliance on the stimulus of an intellectual 

 excitement the very essence of which depends on change. Professor 

 Clifford begins one of his lectures by pointing out that if any one will 

 consider what he has done during that day, that which he has done 

 oftenest is to change his mind — i. e., not to alter his resolves, but to 

 change the subject-matter of thought and resolve. It is very true, but 

 the tendency of Professor Clifford's and his clique's teaching is to 

 something much more dangerous — to make change of mind an object 

 of aspiration, and almost of moral duty ; to depreciate the value of the 

 leaning disposition which rests on what is old, and to overrate that of 

 the mercurial disposition which cares only for what is novel. — Spectator, 



EESPECTING KUBBISH. 



MOST of the substance we call the rubbish of our houses finds its 

 way sooner or later into the dust-bin, and thence into the dust- 

 man's cart, which conveys it to the dust-contractor's yard ; and there 

 we are for the most part contented to lose sight of it. It is worth- 

 less to us, and we are thankful to be rid of it, and think no more of it. 

 But no sooner does it reach its destination in the yard than our rub- 

 bish becomes a valuable commodity. The largest cinders are bought 

 by laundresses and braziers, the smaller by brickmakers. The broken 

 crockery is matched and mended by the poor women who sort the 

 heaps, that which is quite past repair being sold with the oyster-shells 

 to make roads ; and the very cats are skinned, before their dead bodies 

 are sent away with other animal and vegetable refuse to be used as 

 manure for fertilizing our fields. Nothing is useless or worthless in the 

 contractor's eyes; for rubbish, like dirt, is simply "matter out of place." 



VOL. XVI. — 7 



