ld be as
noxious as Eugene Sue's idealized proletaires in encouraging the
miserable fallacy that high morality and refined sentiment can grow
out of harsh social relations, ignorance and want; or that the
working-classes are in a condition to enter at once into a millennial
state of _altruism_, wherein every one is caring for every one else,
and no one for himself.

If we need a true conception of the popular character to guide our
sympathies rightly, we need it equally to check our theories, and
direct us in their application. The tendency created by the splendid
conquests of modern generalization, to believe that all social
questions are merged in economical science, and that the relations of
men to their neighbors may be settled by algebraic equations,--the
dream that the uncultured classes are prepared for a condition which
appeals principally to their moral sensibilities,--the aristocratic
dilettantism which attempts to restore the "good old times" by a sort
of idyllic masquerading, and to grow feudal fidelity and veneration as
we grow prize turnips, by an artificial system of culture,--none of
these diverging mistakes can co-exist with a real knowledge of the
people, with a thorough study of their habits, their ideas, their
motives. The landholder, the clergyman, the mill-owner, the mining
agent, have each an opportunity for making precious observations on
different sections of the working-class, but unfortunately their
experience is too often not registered at all, or its results are too
scattered to be available as a source of information and stimulus to
the public mind generally. If any man of sufficient moral and
intellectual breadth, whose observations would not be vitiated by a
foregone conclusion, or by a professional point of view, would devote
himself to studying the natural history of our social classes,
especially of the small shop-keepers, artisans and peasantry,--the
degree in which they are influenced by local conditions, their maxims
and habits, the points of view from which they regard their religious
teachers, and the degree in which they are influenced by religious
doctrines, the interaction of the various classes on each other, and
what are the tendencies in their position towards disintegration or
towards development,--and if, after all this study, he would