It is the elderly readers among many of to-day, but that is about all. the working-classes who will be found pointing a moral or adorning a tale with some apt line from "Man was Made to Mourn" or "The Cotter's Saturday Night;" or quoting not only Childe Harold or Don Juan, but even "Lara" or "The Corsair." In regard to prose reading the situation is much the same. With those who in the more literal sense of the phrase earn their bread by the sweat of their brow, fiction always has been, and still remains, the most popular form of reading. To people given to the Gradgrindian modes of thought and reasoning it may appear that a preference for novels over "instructive" works is, in itself, at once a sign and cause of a want of culture. We have heard propositions to that effect gravely laid down and argumentatively maintained. We mention this idea merely to show that we do not overlook it. To enter into any set refutation of it here we take to be quite unnecessary. As a matter of fact and experience, the reading of the higher class of novels is calculated to give, and does give, culture-in that general sense in which we are using the word. The novel has succeeded the drama as the form in which the most gifted minds put forth their thoughts and teachings, and as the embodiment of such thoughts and teachings the works of the great masters of fiction must refine and elevate-ay, and inform too. Though an incidental, it is an important, feature of some of our grandest novels that they induce a taste for collateral reading of a more or less imforming and culture-giving kind. Walter Scott has sent thousands to the histories, and Captain Marryat to narratives of voyages, travels, and adventures. In the same way hosts of Thackeray's readers must surely have turned not only to the history but the literature of the periods with which he deals, better prepared to appreciate and enjoy them, than they would have been had "Esmond" and "The Virginians" never been written. Nor does this incidental effect of novel-reading end with directing readers to other distinctive branches of literature. By some passing allusion, illustration, or quotation, a good novel will frequently lead a reader to seek out and peruse some odd volume that, to say the least of it, will, in stock phrase, well repay perusal. We speak on this head from an acquaintance with many "cases in point"-cases in which among working-men novel-reading has originated and established a sound, cultured, and widely reaching taste for general reading. Of course those who have had no such personal experience, and may not be prepared to accept as conclusive the view of the position put forward above, may argue that the tendency of novel-reading is to become a master passion, to the gratification of which every other form of reading is sacrificed. That those holding this view could in support of it cite their cases in point by the hundreds, we are well aware. But we are not dealing here with an abstract or unconditioned proposition. In the first place it must be borne in mind that we are speaking in special relation to the working-classes, and in the second place that there are novels and novels. We have had in view works of the first rank only. We are taking no account of the modern manufactured novels produced in "quantities" by the trade-the trade only knows why-the threevolume collections of dulness and drivel which lumber "all the libraries," and through them pass, firstly, to the novel-craving class, and, secondly and lastly-we suppose to the agents of some of the many industries founded upon the utilization of waste products. For either man or woman as a reader to become a mere indiscriminating novel devourer is undoubtedly an evil. It must, by exciting an undue or unbalanced exercise of the emotional faculties, cause mental enervation. A taste for high-class fiction, however, involves no risk on this head. We may return to the works of the great novelists time after time, and find renewed pleasure and profit in each successive reading. The spell that they lay upon us is no doubt a powerful one, but it is exhaustible without being exhausting. The number of such works is by no means so large as to make their reading an occupation for life, even to one with the restricted leisure of a working man. Their limited quantity obviates either necessity or excuse for an exclusive devotion to novelreading. An appreciation of their quality is a safeguard against their reader acquiring any taste for the unqualitied manufactured novels upon which the indiscriminating fiction devourers chiefly batten. A still stronger safeguard perhaps in this respect is that collateral reading to which, as we have said, a taste for the higher classes of novels is likely to lead. Take, for instance, the case of one who has, through the Waverleys, been led to a knowledge of at least the more picturesque historians. Such a reader would, putting aside for the moment the charm of vividness and vigour of style, find the writings of authors like Macaulay, Froude, Prescott, and Motley infinitely more interesting and exciting than the bulk of the novels of the day. For these latter are not interesting and not exciting, and they have neither vigour nor vividness of style to be put out of question. The direct bearing of these remarks upon the general subject of a possible popular culture may not at a first glance be so self-obvious to readers as they appear to our own mind's eye. It may be thought we are dwelling upon this phase of the question at disproportionate length, but the fact is, if our standpoint be correct, this matter of novel-reading becomes virtually the key of the position. If, as we assume to be axiomatic, reading is to be taken as the first and greatest means to the end of popular culture, the novel at once becomes of primary importance: not from any supposition of its being distinctively the most culturegiving form of composition, but because it is the first form of reading to which youth takes. A boy may be put to more "solid" or "instructive" kinds of reading by way of educational or moral task-work, but it is to fiction that he turns naturally. If he is inclined to read at all he will read fiction, and that in despite of any unwise endeavours to prevent him from doing so. It is in that way that he will in the first place get a bent for general reading; therefore to direct his taste in this matter becomes a point of the utmost importance in relation to the question of culture. The absence of a little judicious guidance, and not too obtrusive supervision, on this head is one leading cause of the plentiful lack of culture which characterizes the mass of the working-classes. The want of such guidance is especially disastrous in this age of the multiplication of trashy-and often worse than trashy-"boy" dreadfuls and serials. A generation back a larger proportion of the workingclasses, than is the case at present, did not read at all, had not acquired even the mechanical power to read; but the boy who could read and had an appetite for reading found himself chiefly dependent upon healthy and strengthening fare. At that time, as we have already said, penny dreadfuls were not altogether unknown; they were, however, few in number; and there was, if we may be allowed the expression, a certain grace of shame about the vending of them. Those who had heard of and wished to have them had to seek them out, and at the worst soon got through the available supply. The books among which a boy was thrown, that boys talked about, borrowed, lent, exchanged, and in their own fashion recommended and criticized, were "The Pilgrim's Progress," "Robinson Crusoe," "The Arabian Nights," "Gulliver's Travels," "Don Quixote," "Gil Blas," and the more famous novels of Scott, Marryat, and Fenimore Cooper. Not to know these was for a reading boy of those days to argue himself unknown. Then came for those who cared to go further-as most who had come so far did-" Roderick Random," "Tom Jones," "The Scottish Chiefs," and a favourite few of the too-numerous-to-be-mentioned romances of G. P. R. James. About some of these there was no doubt a certain coarseness of tone, but this, as a distinctive feature, was as imperceptible to boys as was the social and political satire underlying the story in Gulliver. They read for story, not style, and whatever there might be of evil in the style fell harmlessly away from them. In addition to the other forms in which they were obtainable, a majority of the works named above were to be had in the one really popular penny number publication of that day. The miscellany in question had, if we remember rightly, some such generic title as The Family Library, and consisted exclusively of reprints of standard books. Among the works issued in it we can distinctly recollect Mrs. Inchbald's two novels, "A Simple Story" and "Nature and Art," and "Tom Jones," and "Roderick Random." Fiction constituted the bulk of the publication, but Buchan's "Domestic Medicine," and one or two other works of that kind were also included in it. Each penny number contained eight pages, book size; there were no illustrations; the paper was coarse, and the printing exhibited a tendency to smudgyness; but to youth the contents were simply entrancing, and it was for these numbers that the one-pennied boy of that period had his penny to spare. At that date of which we are speaking a schoolboy of the working classes had more time and more spirit for general reading than fall to the lot of schoolboys nowadays. The cram system, at its present highpressure pitch, at any rate had not been applied to the work of elementary education. The "subjects" taught in the schools were comparatively few. The work of the day, while sufficient to exercise, was not so heavy as to weary or bewilder, the brain. When "home lessons" were given at all they were light, and not very strongly insisted upon. Allowing for an average degree of home suit and service in the way of "running errands," and a reasonable amount of play, a boy could still give two hours a day to reading, even on schooldays. On Saturdays he could give double, or more than double, that length of time-not to speak of the big "goes in" during holidays. And going to his book fresh and eager in spirit, and with the proficiency in the art of "skip," which he soon acquires, a boy will soon get through a wonderful amount of reading in such times. Other conditions of his environment were also in favour of the boy of the earlier period. If his father happened to be a reading man, his time and attention were not diffused over three or four daily newspapers, each assuming an oracular tone and Sir Oracle bearing, and all engaged in drawing from the same premises conflicting and contradictory conclusions. His one weekly paper cost him from threepence to sixpence, and was about as much as he cared to run to" in that line. It satisfied him all the more easily, for that, if inclined to politics as most reading-men among the working-classes then were -he could avail himself of metal more attractive than any newspaper furnished. The times afforded stirring themes, and produced men who could deal with them in stirring fashion. The literature of the AntiCorn-Law League was still fresh in the public mind. Its tracts, containing the speeches of Bright, Cobden, and other famous orators of the association, were in all men's hands. The "Politics for the People," started by Maurice and Kingsley, and containing the latter's "Parson Lot's Letters to the Chartists," were popular readings. The sensation created by "Cheap Clothes and Nasty," perhaps the most "slashing" political-social pamphlet ever written, was still felt; while the same writer's thrilling novels, "Alton Locke" and "Yeast," were sought after by no section of readers more eagerly than by those of the working-classes. These were the kinds of reading that working-men chiefly devoted themselves to at that day. These were the things they chiefly discussed when two or three of them were gathered together round their own firesides. Johnny or Billy wedged into the chimney-corner on such occasions, and gloating over "Ivanhoe" or "The Last of the Mohicans," would at the moment understand little and care not at all about what was being said by his elders. But it would often enough happen that some pregnant fact or phrase would unconsciously sink into his mind, and bear fruit in the after-time, when he came to have political feeling or to desire political knowledge for himself. Where such political reading, as we have here been speaking of, had a place, there would usually be found in the home a few well-selected books in the way of general reading. Among them there would more likely than not be numbered some volumes of such cheap editions of the works of "standard" poets as were then current, and from them the children of the house would probably get their first taste of poetry. A boy, whose reading had been broadly of the extent, and on the lines we have been indicating, would have imbibed that general taste for reading which becomes the means for acquiring, not merely without toil, but with positive pleasure, a fair, elevating, and soul-satisfying degree and kind of general culture. By the same process his mind. would have acquired the bent that would lead him to continue to gratify and develop the taste. As the years went by and his mental powers enlarged, he would read his way onwards and upwards through the works of Jane Austin, Charlotte Bronte, and others, to Dickens, Thackeray, and George Eliot, and come out of the course fully competent to do his own winnowing among the mass of later works of fiction. Interspersed with his novel-reading would be that incidental reading to which the perusal of the higher classes of fiction leads. This latter reading, even in its comparatively early stages, would be pretty sure to include the narrative poems of Scott and Byron, and Pope's translation of The Iliad. Thus, when the time came when our representative reader desired to become acquainted with the works of the immortal masters, Shakespeare and Milton and Burns, he would go to them with a mind not wholly unattuned. Nourished by such food as this the appetite for reading grows with what it feeds upon. The taste for and habit of reading becomes fixed. A sense of culture enters into a man's life. His mind to him a kingdom is. His daily way of life may seem dull and commonplace, and his surroundings sordid, but he has within himself a charm to transport him beyond the ignorant present. He can through books communion hold with those high spirits who call "The future from its cradle, and the past Out of its grave, and make the present last But they Such men are to be found among the working-classes. are not sufficiently numerous to give a tone of sweetness and light to the general body. On the contrary, they only serve to make the darkness visible. For be it observed what we have been pointing out is not. that working-class boys a generation ago were a body of readers, but that the chapter of accidents was then more favourable than it is now, to such boys as happened to take to reading. Any general or systematic guidance in the matter, any clear perception of its importance, was as conspicuous by its absence then as it is now. But at present the accidents of the situation, if we may so term them, are not only not favourable to, they are directly against, a youth falling upon a class of literature in the beginning, calculated to lead in the end to a sound |