Family Life of the Middle Class. 219 



Jeremy Taylor, or Sir Thomas Brown. The foundation of a 

 fine taste in literature is often laid by good reading 1 , and good 

 family reading does not require the acting style in which certain 

 favourite public performers over-indulge. Boys as well as girls 

 ought to learn music, if they have any aptitude for it, other- 

 wise the time so spent is wasted; but whoever pretends to 

 learn music should not be satisfied with playing or singing 

 the fashionable pieces of the day. Some knowledge of music 

 as a science should be acquired. This involves a little thorough 

 bass, and a little accoustics; and music should further be 

 studied as a fine art, and some notion obtained of the pecu- 

 liarities of the leading schools of the great composers, and the 

 methods by which their effects were produced. If music is 

 worth learning at all, it should, like all other things, be learned 

 properly, whether the study be elementary, or carried to a great 

 extent. Drawing and painting should be studied on the same 

 broad principle, whether the time devoted to them be more or 

 less. A study of drawing and painting would be useful to 

 thousands who could never be proficient in either art. It 

 assists the comprehension of what great artists have accom- 

 plished ; and those who have paid no attention to perspective, 

 colour, and shadow, have not learnt to see. The beauty of form, 

 and its idealization, will be brought within the mental grasp of 

 those who have learnt how to look at a fine figure-piece, while 

 the landscape artists (and especially Turner) will teach those who 

 study them how to enjoy the aspects of nature in all the gor- 

 geous subtleties of atmosphere and light. 



Some elements of science, such as physics, chemistry, 

 geology, and astronomy, should be deemed essentials in any 

 system of education, and also the rudiments of physiology and 

 natural history. 



No family that can afford the money ought to consider its 

 house furnished if it does not contain a telescope and a micro- 

 scope, neither of which need be very expensive for general 

 purposes; and there should be a fair collection of books, for re- 

 ference on all the leading topics likely to interest rational per- 

 sons living in a civilized country. Diversities of taste would make 

 some tend more to art, some more to science, and some more 

 to literature ; and, although certain elementary information on 

 a variety of topics ought to be communicated to all, it would 

 be a grave mistake to endeavour to force all to pursue the 

 same career of study without regard to difference of mental 

 constitution. Let us suppose a family of half a dozen persons. 

 It is most probable that all will like, at times, to be well read 

 to, and most, if not all, will enjoy the good music that those 

 most proficient in that art can give at leisure intervals. If 

 one has a fancy for observational astronomy, all are sure to 



