54 
JOURNAL OF THE PLYMOUTH INSTITUTION. 
thought is a factor in deploying the powers of the soul. In short 
we run at railway speed — there is no time for reflection. The 
Selborne naturalist tells us the antlers of stags formerly grew 
larger because those animals were disturbed less. Is it not possible 
to disturb and distract man's mind till it dwindles down to a mere 
core of selfish cunning 1 We know of no estimate more disparaging 
to our own times than Charles Kingsley's remarks in his preface 
to Brooks's Fool of Quality. He asks why it is such chaste and 
noble sentiments, couched in such unrivalled language, should be 
so long neglected ; and he plainly hints at the reason. It is not 
because our generation has outgrown the calibre of the ideas of 
this fine old work, but simply because the flood-tide of popular 
taste does not rise so high. Bookshelves now adorn the cottage- 
homes of England where reading was once unknown; and the 
poor man's children can read, and they do read a great deal of poor 
stuff in the periodical literature, but upon the whole the cottages 
have gained. Yet the wealthy, middle, and trading classes have 
not now that genuine love for reading which prevailed in the land 
a hundred years ago, when lines from Thompson's Seasons and The 
Deserted Village became household words. And this is un- 
doubtedly due to the scattering of domestic thought, and the 
general dissipation of the public mind through the facility of 
travel ; in other words, it is due to the railway which girdles the 
globe. Home was once more emphatically home; life had to be 
lived there ; and the mind had time to settle down to steady 
thought and fixed pleasures. The standard works of old England 
are not fingered much by the generation in which we live ; and 
although it is fashionable to take home the latest book of promise, 
it is not the fashion really to read it. And upon the whole, 
notwithstanding the increase of books, we can't help believing the 
middle classes are falling away — have fallen away — from their 
literary tastes. That household god, the piano, may have something 
to do with it ; but surely it is of more importance to educate the 
heart than the ear. The accomplished daughters of a clergyman 
lately assured us they considered the Vicar of Wakefield an un- 
readable book ! They remembered something about a gross of 
green spectacles, but had not penetrated so far as the sermon in 
the prison. Can we suppose these young ladies ever looked into 
Paradise Lost ? When Laurence Sterne served the parish of 
Sutton, the leading families of the county assembled at York to 
