strong constructive and
experimental turn, told me that, as a rule, he found gentlemen less
capable of entering into his ideas than common joiners and blacksmiths,
because these humble workmen, from their habit of dealing with matter,
had acquired some experience of its nature. For my own part, I have
often been amazed by the difficulty of making something clear to a
classically educated gentleman which any intelligent mechanic would have
seen to the bottom, and all round, after five or six minutes of
explanation. There is a certain French nobleman whose ignorance I have
frequent opportunities of fathoming, always with fresh astonishment at
the depths of it, and I declare that he knows no more about the
properties of stone, and timber, and metal, than if he were a cherub in
the clouds of heaven!

But there is something in caste-sentiment even more prejudicial to
culture than ignorance itself, and that is the affectation of strong
preferences for certain branches of knowledge in which people are not
seriously interested. There is nothing which people will not pretend to
like, if a liking for it is supposed to be one of the marks and
indications of gentility. There has been an immense amount of this kind
of affectation in regard to classical scholarship, and we know for a
certainty that it _is_ affectation whenever people are loud in their
praise of classical authors whom they never take the trouble to read. It
may have happened to you, as it has happened to me from time to time, to
hear men affirm the absolute necessity of classical reading to
distinction of thought and manner, and yet to be aware at the same time,
from close observation of their habits, that those very men entirely
neglected the sources of that culture in which they professed such
earnest faith. The explanation is, that as classical accomplishments are
considered to be one of the evidences of gentility, whoever speaks
loudly in their favor affirms that he has the tastes and preferences of
a gentleman. It is like professing the fashionable religion, or
belonging to an aristocratic shade of opinion in politics. I have not a
doubt that all affectations of this kind are injurious to genuine
culture, for genuine culture requires sincerity of interest before
everything, and the fashionable affectations, so far from attracting
sincere men to the departments of learning which happen to be _a la
mode_, positively drive them away, just as many have become
Noncon