216 Family Life of the Middle Glass. 



and girls, as we prefer — at an age when help to continue old 

 studies, or enter upon new ones, is peculiarly desirable ; and, 

 as a rule, nothing of the kind is provided. Some years ago, 

 in the metropolis, there were in full activity, the Royal 

 Institution, the London Institution, the City of London in 

 Aldersgate Street, the Mechanics in Southampton Buildings, 

 and some others, which were thronged by the members of 

 middle-class families, who attended considerable courses of 

 lectures on important subjects by eminent men. Classes were 

 also common for the further pursuit of the same branches of 

 knowledge. Now, the Royal is in full vigour, the London in 

 genteel decay, the Mechanics in doleful dirt, and others have 

 disappeared. Only the Royal Institution in London, and less 

 than half a dozen other institutions in the three kingdoms, can 

 attract an audience for a course of first-class lectures on any 

 subject whatever. Eight hundred or a thousand institutions 

 exist throughout the country, of which many neither have 

 lectures nor form classes ; while nearly all in which lectures 

 figure confine them to subjects that are trivial, or to graver 

 ones treated in the most useless and flimsy way. 



Even in London, if any family of more than common 

 intellectual ambition would like its boys and girls, when their 

 school time has passed, to acquire a reasonable knowledge of 

 any physical science, or to get help in the more difficult 

 branches of literary or artistic study, they are not encouraged 

 by facilities, but staggered by difficulties. A district in which 

 five or ten thousand families of moderate means live, ought to 

 be able to co-operate and provide the necessary machinery of 

 lectures, classes, and libraries; but nothing of the kind is 

 done. The social demarcations to which we have adverted, no 

 doubt, constitute a serious difficulty, but the chief obstacle is 

 the absence of desire. 



Much drudgery falls upon many members of the middle class, 

 but in cases where pecuniary means are sufficient to preclude the 

 necessity for over-toil, the dignity that should belong to home- 

 life is damaged by idleness and frivolity. In too many cases, if 

 the young men are not in business, they may be found in the 

 billiard-room of a public house; and if the girls are not 

 required for household duties, their hours are passed in the 

 idle gossip of morning calls, or evening parties. Thousands 

 of families, which do not fall into these special errors, set up 

 for their standard, propriety, not excellence ; and if they escape 

 the blame of doing mischief, they are still open to censuiv, as 

 they contribute nothing to the active forces by which society is 

 prevented from running to decay. 



Young men, prematurely emancipated from parental 

 authority, usually take to their own courses, while girls, 

 perhaps of finer tastes and more sense, are subjected to too 



