PUBLIC HEALTH OF TEE MUSCLES. 363 



the streets. The people will then feel that this is knowledge direct 

 from the reservoir of the age, and that if it is not good, they can- 

 not complain of it. We therefore regard secular education as the 

 only public education which is possible ; and the public school- 

 masters consequently as a clericy of which the Queen is the head, 

 and which must emanate, coequally with the church itself, from the 

 progressive State. 



But the great brain-builder is action, or industry directed by 

 knowledge ; for real doctrine is the brilliance of good works. The 

 encouragement of action is therefore a department of public health, 

 and indeed the chiefest of all. This occurs by the stimulation of 

 examples, great pieces of art, or model actions ; and the prizes of 

 the workers have no proper source, lower than the hand which 

 grasps the sceptre. For if the cradles of the land hold the dew 

 which is ascending into private existence, the throne, or mountain of 

 the State, is the altitude whence the public rivers must flow. The 

 clergy of industry, which is Grod's church in the muscles, in England, 

 in 1851, receive their first ordination. It is fortunate that we write 

 in a year when the throne is the centre of the arts : when a great 

 prince, faithful to the height where Providence sets him, dispenses 

 the provocatives of new achievements to bless the nations of the 

 earth; when private selfishness and laissez faire have been brought 

 to their knees, and old inactions have yielded under a royal lash of 

 shame. It is mere desert to say, that Albert is the victor in this 

 social battle, and that the standard which he has planted in his 

 crystal camp will not be plucked down again, because it belongs to 

 the nature of man to take the fire of his industry from his chiefs. 



The conception of public health implies the reconstruction of all 

 the circumstances with which the organism is surrounded, upon the 

 model of its natural and spiritual wants, and the presumption is, 

 that many diseases and vices will die which circumstances, and not 

 the choice of individuals, have engendered. This result itself, how- 

 ever, can only run pari passu with the increase of private virtue, 

 and hence, as we said before, the throne to which the whole pro- 

 blem perpetually refers itself, is the regeneration of man. After any 

 given circumstantial operation has been effected, an intractable mass 

 of evil will still be left, which requires new circumstances of cure, 



