r the Destitute, and
become teachers (or, at least, become classified as such). True there
are a few "prizes" in the profession, and to some of the _rude
donati_ the Church holds out a helping hand; but the lay members
cannot look forward even to the "congenial gloom of a Colonial
Bishopric."

Others, again, are attracted to employments (for which they may have
no special aptitude) by the large salaries or profits which are to be
earned therein, often with but little trouble or previous training--or
so, at least, they believe. The idea of vocation is quite obscured,
and a man's occupation is in effect the shortest distance from poverty
which he cannot endure, to wealth and leisure which he may not know
how to use.

It frequently happens, too, that a young man is unable to afford
either the time or the expense necessary to qualify for the profession
which he desires to enter, and for which he is well adapted by his
talents and temperament. Not a few prefer in such circumstances to
"play for safety," and secure a post in the Civil Service.

It is plain from such considerations as these that all attempts to
realise the Utopian ideal must needs be, for the present at least, but
very partially successful. Politics are not the only sphere in which
"action is one long second-best." Even if it were possible at the
present time to train each youth for that calling which his own gifts
and temperament, or the reasoned judgment of his parents, selected as
his life-work, it is very far from certain that he would ultimately
find himself engaged therein. English institutions are largely based
on the doctrine of individual liberty, and those statutes which
establish or safeguard individual rights are not unjustly regarded as
the "bulwarks of the Constitution." But the inalienable right of a
father to choose a profession for his son, or of the son to choose one
for himself, is often exercised without any real inquiry into the
conditions of success in the profession selected. Hence the frequent
complaints about the "overcrowding of the professions" either in
certain localities or in the country at large. The Bar affords a
glaring example. "There be many which are bred unto the law, yet is
the law not bread unto them." The number of recruits which any one
branch of industry requires in a single year is not constant, and, in
some cases, is subject to great fluctuations; yet there are few or no
statistics available for the guidance of t