FEBRUARY 195 



idea what to do with their savings, if they have any ; as, like 

 other classes, they constantly lose their money in unfor- 

 tunate investments offering high interest, and sometimes 

 are even attracted to do this by ' big ' names on the pro- 

 spectus, often those of connections of their employers, 

 which they look upon as a guarantee for security. 



Whenever depression comes upon me from associat- 

 ing with those who are complaining about the ways and 

 fashions of the time they live in and the ruin of their own 

 generation, whether in the classes above or those below 

 them, I fly to some of the books of the eighteenth century, 

 and never fail to get the consolation I require. What 

 has received the greatest abuse in my time is the Board 

 School education and the destruction it has wrought 

 amongst those who become domestic servants. I myself 

 totally disbelieve this. First of all, those who go into the 

 higher schools are very few in number, and nothing is so 

 important in a free country as that all should have the 

 power to rise, if their talents fit them for it. Here is 

 a sentence of Oliver Goldsmith's, in one of his essays. 

 In his time it was a higher class that met with his 

 disapproval, but it reminds me of remarks that I am 

 constantly hearing now about those who used to be 

 called ' the uneducated ' : 



* Amidst the frivolous pursuits and pernicious dissipa- 

 tions of the present age a respect for the qualities of the 

 understanding still prevails, to such a degree that almost 

 every individual pretends to have a taste for the Belles - 

 Lettres. The spruce 'prentice sets up for a critic, and 

 the puny beau piques himself on being a connoisseur. 

 Without assigning causes for this universal presumption, 

 we shall proceed to observe that if it was attended with 

 no other inconvenience than that of exposing the pretender 

 to the ridicule of those few who can sift his pretensions, 



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