Benefit
Societies, Savings' Banks, Infant Schools, Mechanic Institutes, or any
other. Circumstances have forced this nation to do, by its
manufacturers, an undue portion of the dirty and unwholesome work of the
globe. The revolutions among which we have lived have unsettled the
value of all kinds of property, and of labour, the most precious of all,
to that degree, that misery and privation are frightfully prevalent. We
must bear the sight of this, and endure its pressure, till we have by
reflection discovered the cause, and not till then can we hope even to
palliate the evil. It is a thousand to one but that the means resorted
to will aggravate it.

Farewell, ever affectionately yours, W. WORDSWORTH.

_Quere_.--Is the education in the parish schools of Scotland gratuitous,
or if not, in what degree is it so?[35]

[35] _Memoirs_, vol. ii. pp. 183-92. G.

(_d_) EDUCATION OF DUTY.

_Letter to the Rev. Dr. Wordsworth_.

=Rydal= Mount, April 27. 1830.

MY DEAR BROTHER,

Was Mr. Rose's course of sermons upon education? The more I reflect upon
the subject, the more I am convinced that positive instruction, even of
a religious character, is much over-rated. The education of man, and
above all of a Christian, is the education of _duty_, which is most
forcibly taught by the business and concerns of life, of which, even for
children, especially the children of the poor, book-learning is but a
small part. There is an officious disposition on the part of the upper
and middle classes to precipitate the tendency of the people towards
intellectual culture in a manner subversive of their own happiness, and
dangerous to the peace of society. It is mournful to observe of how
little avail are lessons of piety taught at school, if household
attentions and obligations be neglected in consequence of the time taken
up in school tuition, and if the head be stuffed with vanity from the
gentlemanliness of the employment of reading. Farewell.

W. W.[36]

[36] _Memoirs_, =vol=. ii. p. 193. G.

(_e_) SPEECH ON LAYING THE FOUNDATION-STONE OF THE NEW SCHOOL IN THE
VILLAGE OF BOWNESS, WINDERMERE, 1836.

Standing here as Mr. Bolton's substitute, at his own request, an honour
of which I am truly sensible, it gives me peculiar pleasure to see in
spite of this stormy weather, so numerous a company of his friends and
neighbours upon this occasion. How happy would it have made him to have
been eye-witness