2 THE OLD RED SANDSTONE. 
themselves, it will be all at your expense. Leave them to 
harangue unheeded, and set yourselves to occupy your lei- — 
sure hours in making yourselves wiser men. Learn to make 
a right use of your eyes: the commonest things are worth 
looking at—even stones and weeds, and the most familiar 
arimals. Read good books, not forgetting the best of all: 
there is more true philosophy in the Bible than in every work 
of every sceptic that ever wrote; and we would be all mis- 
erable creatures without it, and none more miserable than 
you. You are jealous of the upper classes; and perhaps it 
is too true that, with some good, you have received much 
evil at their hands. It must be confessed they have hitherto 
been doing comparatively little for you, and a great deal for 
themselves. But upper and lower classes there must be, so 
long as the world lasts; and there is only one way in which 
your jealousy of them can be well directed. Do not let them 
get ahead of you in intelligence. It would be alike unwise 
and unjust to attempt casting them down to your own level, 
and no class would suffer moré in the attempt than your- 
selves; for you would only be clearing the way, at an im- 
mense expense of blood, and under a tremendous pressure 
of misery, for another and perhaps worse aristocracy, with 
some second Cromwell or Napoleon at their head. Society, 
however, is in a state of continual flux:.some in the upper 
classes are fro‘n time to time going down, and some of you 
from time to time mounting up to take their places — always 
the more steady and intelligent among you, remember; and 
if all your minds were cultivated, not merely intellectually, 
but morally also, you would find yourselves, as a body, in 
the possession of a power which every charter in the world 
could not confer upon you, and which all the tyranny or in- 
justice of the world could not withstand, 
