48 ATTAINABLE IDEALS. 



pie who talk about the danger of educating young 

 men and women above their stations. Has any- 

 body ever yet seen a man or woman who was thus 

 overeducated? We have all met hundreds and 

 thousands of people who were not well enough 

 instructed or trained for their stations; but we 

 never remember to have met anybody who had 

 too much knowledge, or too much culture, too 

 wide an acquaintance with the great works of 

 literature, too deep an insight into the great 

 truths of science and of nature. Nor do we quite 

 see how such a thing is even possible — how any 

 man, however humble his sphere, can have trained 

 too highly his own tastes and his own faculties, 

 can be too intelligent, or too cultivated. Similar 

 tastes and similar faculties may be rare at present 

 in the particular class to which he belongs ; but 

 that is no reason for saying in a condemnatory 

 sense that their possessor is overeducated. It is a 

 reason really for endeavoring to interest as many 

 more persons of his class as possible in the same 

 direction. There is a common navvy employed 

 on some railway works in the west of England 

 who has a marked taste for antiquities, and a 

 really considerable acquaintance with the remains 

 of prehistoric man. He has collected with knowl- 

 edofc and skill a small museum of old stone im- 

 plements, and he wears — for love of it — an 

 ancient British gold coin of some rarity and value 



