Human Physiology. 



and flannel to poor cottagers, shows some sense of his duty to 

 his fellow men. It is something to give people an annual holi- 

 day; to let the pale and grimy children of the London streets 

 see the green fields and breathe the sweet air of the country 

 once a-year; to scatter alms from one's abundance. It was 

 good-natured ostentation for a Midland Earl to send the jewels 

 he had given his beautiful Countess to the Exhibition, includ- 

 a coronet that cost ^250,000, containing a single diamond 

 worth ,30,000 but it would be better to attend to -the sani- 

 tary condition of the fever-stricken towns from which his 

 princely revenues are drawn. Yet these very riches, in the 

 hands of wiser men, may be of incalculable benefit; and even 

 the hardest avarice may be of use in collecting and saving 

 what other forms of selfishness would have utterly wasted and 

 lost. 



I have no quarrel with wealth, and its distribution among an 

 ignorant population would be a great evil. I have no war with 

 landlords. They hinder improvements, but they still more pre- 

 vent deformity and waste. An educated, benevolent, tasteful 

 proprietor of a great domain cannot well be spared from the 

 existing social state; and with a little more enlightenment, and 

 a finer sense of justice and humanity, he is the destined chief, 

 the providential organiser and leader of the society of the 

 future. 



We are to prepare ourselves for the destined advent of that 

 society. Every social condition supposes a higher and a better 

 one, because the law of humanity is a law of progress, wherein 

 man differs from every other earthly creature. And this pro- 

 cess is not wholly dependent upon time. Under favourable 

 conditions, societies form with great rapidity. Palestine, Egypt, 

 Greece, Rome, and the Europe of the middle ages, gave us 

 brilliant examples of such possibilities. How rapid was the 

 revival of learning and the arts ! How wonderfully are the dis- 

 coveries and inventions of our own time transforming the 



