Our Pet Social Doctor.

A VERY sensible lady remarked to me, early in the month of August, ere autumn was “laying here and there a fiery finger on the leaves," that they must be very eccentric gentlemen who, turning their backs upon the moors, Baden, the Rhine, and Chamouni, were content to travel with great rolls of blue paper, imprisoned in red tape, to the sombre recesses of the Four Courts, Dublin. I took leave to remind this sagacious lady that the eccentricity was not all masculine. On board the splendid ships which connect the Saxon with the Celt, there were portentous rolls of paper, held in silken bondage, which contained the reflections of divers ladies, on the most charming variety of subjects. Ladies had abandoned the felicity of table-d'hôte flirting, of continental établissements, where the officers in garrison are "so very polite," of seashore rambles, and of novel-reading on the shady side of the jetty, for the dull routine of secretaryships and debates. We agreed that the eccentricity was proved on both sides, and I maintained that the eccentricity was at once amiable and useful.

Dublin, moreover, was surely worth a visit, and an Irish welcome worth having. It was no idle compliment paid to Irishmen when the Queen's representatives congratulated them on an improved tone of feeling. Dublin of to-day is very unlike the Dublin of 1841. College Green is as peaceable as Charing Cross. "Repale" has gone to its long last sleep. A cry for "Rint" would not raise a fourpenny-piece. Here and there, it is true, the Saxon is still called a foreigner; and every where the Irishman is a superior being to the Englishman. The jealousies of races die slowly. The jealousies of great cities are weakened only by intercommunication. I have heard a Liverpool lady assert that pure English was spoken only on the banks of the Mersey; the patois of the Inns of Court and St. Stephen's being execrable. Lately, a dispute arose in Dublin about the qualities of Jude's turtle-soup. A Londoner ventured to ask if it were as good as that to be had at Birch's in the City of London. "As good?" cried Hibernia's patriotic son. "Is it as good? Sure, it's twinty times as good!" Of course, the Dublin enthusiast had not eaten from the plates of Birch. This pardonable vanity takes, in Dublin, a highly gratifying turn. The stranger is welcome within the gates of all with whom he comes in contact. If the ceremonial part of visiting be carried to extravagant excess in Merrion Square, at least it is conducted with cordiality. Every man in Dublin is proud of Dublin, and is anxious to give the Saxon foreigner a favourable impression. He is led through Sackville Street by the great Nelson pillar, over Carlisle Bridge, between Trinity College and the great Bank of Ireland, along Grafton Street, where the fair, violet-eyed, and supple-limbed Irish ladies are shopping,-between loosely driven cars, to which the riders appear to be

VOL. III.

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wafered, to St. Stephen's Green. Again, he is driven through Phoenix Park to the strawberry-beds, and is asked whether London can show timber as fine, or grass as green. Then the "Sweet Wicklow Mountains" are introduced.

Certes! there were attractions enough in and about Dublin to lure thither the grave men and women who meet annually, to set forth social nostrums for the consideration of the public. And Dublin did the honours generously and cheerfully. Lord Brougham was the lion of the capital. The city had a holiday aspect. Even the wrangle of the municipal authorities over the address to be presented to the Queen, was gaily and airily conducted. There were humour and play in the most savage onslaughts; just as in the bright and pleasant streets even rags look cheerful. A funeral procession making its way along Sackville Street was as like a holiday jaunt as it could well be. The hearse was covered with dingy white plumes; and behind it rolled low-backed cars, filled with people habited in all the colours of the rainbow:-chatting lightly. The beggars' petitions had not the piteous whine of English alms-seeking. The strange figures upon rough horses that jogged amid the splendid equipages; the moustachioed policeman doing duty with the liveliest manner; the clattering news-boys with their roguish faces and their oily brogue; the endless varieties of uncouth dresses of the shouting cardrivers; the absence of all appearance of business,-made the great City of the Emerald Isle endurable, even under a broiling, blistering sun.

Papers on sanitary science, trades-unions, law amendment, temperance, juvenile crime, the increase or decrease of pauperism, in this heat! Yet here is grand old Lord Brougham with his inaugural address, brisk and happy over his work. He speaks column upon column of subtle thoughts he has digested, to guide the swarms of doctors and doctoresses about him. He trips from subject to subject, never losing his grasp, never faltering by the way, an intellectual Leotard, with more than fourscore years upon his white head. There is pathos in his exordium. He speaks over the graves of his great friends. He must feel

"like one who treads alone

Some banquet-hall deserted;

Whose lights are fled, whose garlands dead,
And all but he departed!"

Greatly and generously the gallant survivor speaks of " the days that are no more," and reviews the social progresses of the world accomplished or begun since he last addressed the Association. His tribute to the memory of Wellington might make even that iron man warm for a moment in his grave.

Classic Carlisle, with liberal, elegant, and spacious mind, offered, as in duty bound, his wreath of laurels to the noble white head by his side. The offering was made in warm sincerity of heart, and was conveyed in the language of a scholar and a gentleman. Such panegyrics never weary; on the contrary, they quicken the pulse of an audience, and

charm it by awakening its generosity. The audience that listened to the Lord Lieutenant in the Hibernian Mansion House found more pleasure in the generous and brilliant speech of his excellency, than from the rich harvest of ripened thought which their president set before them. The social gatherings of the grave doctors, with their specifics in their pockets, were, indeed, we verily believe, of higher use than very many of their nostrums. It is not clear that the best social science is not the science of sociability. The Social Science Congress gave a number of very learned and philanthropic gentlemen an opportunity of taking a glass of wine with their confrères of the sister kingdom; and this opportunity created much good feeling between Celt and Saxon. For the progress of social science, it is at least debateable whether the true apostles are not to be found in little way-side schoolrooms rather than in theatres and at conversazioni.

The newspapers have sufficiently described the readings of the Four Courts, and the debates to which these readings gave rise. The educational debate was the sharpest. It suggested to me the picture of two bears, sitting one upon the north pole and the other upon the south pole, discussing angrily about all the sea and land that lies between them,-so widely were the doctors asunder, and so diffuse were they in the expression of their bigotry. Suppose that we pass from the Four Courts; that we may conjure up a humble social doctor of my own, to whom I took a liking long ago.

It would be idle, as well as impertinent and ridiculous, to question Mr. J. S. Mill's power as a philosophical politician. Every eye that wanders over his page must preserve a respectful expression; every reader who studies him, must pay a high tribute to his conscientiousness, and to the compactness of his reasonings. But the most powerful thinker may be-nay, often is-an indifferent observer of the world, which is to him only a series of problems to be solved. Each beating heart is only a letter at the point of an angle; each nation only a side of a geometrical figure. Your philosopher looks at life-as a commander surveys a battle-field— from an eminence; whence he may not hear the groans, nor watch Death's rigour bind the limbs of the young and valiant. His mighty pen casts up great totals; he scorns units. It is his Titanic business to play at pitch and toss with the destinies; to instruct the ages how to spin "down the ringing grooves of change." He nets theories, which shall show us how the wind will blow in the far-off centuries, catching our crumbled dust upon its invisible but forcible pinion. Would you point his sharp pen with a Sheffield blade? Why-units that ye are, ye of the common world!—the pen is adamant, and deep into the heart of things cuts ineffaceable laws! Would you have the Titan who lifts this adamantine pen -his eyes glowing haughtily down the misty perspective of the coming centuries-turn his noble regard from the far-off future which he distinguishes (clearly as you see your daily knife and fork), to dwell upon the little heart-beatings, the feverish or faint pulses, of mere thousands

of passing men and women? If it please his highness to speak of the busy Bees toiling about him, is it not honour sufficient for them, let him speak of them as he may?

Let him dub them liars, and who shall gainsay him? Weak-voiced men cry out that the Titan has not been familiar with the working-classes whom he would bedaub with his most powerful thumb. He! familiar with the wearers of corduroy,-the throwers of the shuttle,-the brawny arms that glow in the warm light of the forge, the copper-coloured heroes who sail the salt seas with cotton crops from the West, and tea from the East! Is Philosopher Mill to examine units, to regard mere families, to visit the cottage and the workshop,-ere his adamantine pen writes upon the front of all time that the working-men of England are "mostly habitual liars"? Surely not. If any bold gentleman were to pray that the philosopher would condescend to permit working London to be reflected upon that mighty looking-glass his eye, could he reasonably invite him to take a nearer view of the noisy nut-shell than may be had from the ball of St. Paul's? To Mr. Mill's mind, a near view of things is impossible. The long range of his vision blurs near objects to faint shadows. His point of sight is placed in the distance, which he can perceive (we are told) distinctly. And he is able to show how all the lines of the faint and blurred foreground are converging towards his point. In vain you present to him the men and women within hail; he cares, only to see their outline, and to arrange them, upon his converging lines, to his bright, far-off point of sight.

In this way, in the working-classes of England, Philosopher Mill sees only so many "habitual liars." Respectability takes up the cry, and declares that the philosopher is a new Solon. The merchant who haggles in a dusty City corner, and, over every bale of goods that passes from his warehouse, pronounces a fruitful falsehood, strokes his well-shorn chin at Camberwell in the evening, and emphatically takes the side of the philosopher. The working-classes are "mostly habitual liars.”

But turning, I repeat, from philosophic gazers from afar, we approach the doings of humbler folk, who have been among the poor their lives through, and have taken their children by the hand,—our unregarded Social Doctors. Since the opening of the present century, the powerful sections of the British public have been constrained to acknowledge the importance and the sound policy of eradicating ignorance, even from Drury Lane garrets and Liverpool slums. In 1807, when Mr. Whitbread proposed a comprehensive scheme of Poor-Law Reform, and bade the legislature do good to the working-classes, by educating them and affording them sound investment for their savings, he was met by Dr. Johnson's declaration, "that it was not right to teach reading beyond a certain extent, in society." It was gravely contended that the people would become politically dangerous in proportion as they became educated. It was feared that they would grow discontented with their lot, and set their heads together to seize upon the goods of their richer

countrymen. The truth being, that "indigence will rarely be found in company with good education;" education opens new ways of life to the poor. The man in rags, who has culture, even of the simplest description, sees chances, and can invent remunerative employment, where his ignorant labourer starves or begs.

Whitbread's defeat did not deter Mr. Brougham from returning to the attack, in the year following the close of the war. He asked to inquire into the education of the poor of London; and, having obtained his committee, he was its head and its life throughout its arduous labours. He told the country that there were 120,000 children in the English metropolis who had no means of education. This was the thin edge of the wedge, and Brougham was the man to thrust it home. Fine words were from time to time uttered,-Mr. Canning said, that "the foundation of good morals was education,"--but little or no work was done. Parliament should rescue the little Arabs of the streets from alleys and slums, cried wise and good men. Agreed, cried the Church; provided always that they are taught to sign the Thirty-nine Articles, otherwise let them remain Arabs, dismally blind to all hopeful impulses as Baby Bosjesmen. When Mr. Brougham besought the House to mark how charitable grants for educational purposes were squandered and turned from their proper channels, Mother Church turned fiercely upon him, and for years contrived to silence him. His plan for the education of "the poor in England and Wales," introduced to the House in 1820, never passed into law. Still it drew men's minds to the subject of popular education; it stirred men's hearts, and warmed them to the subject. Private benevolence prepared to accomplish, in part, that which Brougham besought the legislature to take up. Mechanics' Institutes sprang into existence, under the auspices of Brougham, Dr. Birkbeck, and others.*

Amid the vast varieties of educational associations which the present century has produced, none have held a more conspicuous place than the Mechanics' Institutes, founded by Dr. Birkbeck and Lord Brougham. It has become the fashion of late to sneer at these popular clubs; but let it be fairly understood that they have done right good work. Established when men were not generally so well educated as they are now, when trade had hardly developed the intelligent class that lies between what is strictly the middle class and the working-classes, these institutions have afforded means of instruction to thousands of poor men. Should we find them copied, from Nova Scotia to Australia, if they had no sound elements in them? It may be true that the mechanics who avail themselves of these institutes, which bear their name, are few compared with the shopmen and junior-clerks who are members,—and this may be regrettable. Still, let us hold, the institutes do good, if chiefly to shopmen and young clerks. These classes are surely better employed in listening to the most comic of comic lectures, or in reading the wildest exaggerations of Lever, than they would be if the library and the lecture-room were closed. To tens of thousands have these sober little country buildings, with their dingy maps and greasy books, been a comfort and the means of advancement. We can call to mind, as we write, the modest figure of a London cobbler, whom we visited on a certain occasion to learn how far he had been indebted for his scholarship to one of these institutes. The man, it is true, although the author of a clever popular book on algebra, was a cobbler still; but he spoke most gratefully of the institute which had made him a thoughtful man. He felt that he had gained something, if only the intimate con