to do well: free
education has not sapped their sense of parental responsibility, but has
inspired them with ambitions, though not for themselves. For themselves
they are conscious of a want of that book-learned culture which the
practice of their skilled crafts cannot bestow, and this makes them
suspicious of those who have it and diffident in conversation with them.
But underneath this reticence and willingness to hear dwells a quiet
scepticism which has no docility in it, and is not to be persuaded out
of its way by any eloquence or any emotion. Missionary influences, like
those of church and chapel, make but little impression on these
quiet-eyed men. The tendency is towards a scientific rather than an
aesthetic outlook.

And just as, amongst the skilled craftsmen, there are individuals
representing every stage of the advance from five-and-twenty years ago
until now, so the earlier stages at least of the same advance are
represented, one beyond another, by labouring men in this village. I
could not find any labourers who are so far forward as the forwardest
artisans; but I could find some who have travelled, say, half the way,
and many who have reached different points between that and the
stagnation which was the starting-point for all. Hence I cannot doubt
that the villagers in general are moving on the route along which the
town artisans have passed a generation ahead of them. They are hindered
by great poverty; hampered by the excessive fatigues of their daily
work; entrammelled by remnants of the peasant traditions which still
cling about them; but the movement has begun. The first stupefying
effect of their eviction from the peasant life is passing away, and they
are setting their faces towards the future, to find a new way of life.

It may be urged that, along with the Church, the newspaper and politics,
education should have been named, as a fourth power affecting the
village destinies. A moment's consideration, however, will discover that
it does not come into the same category with those three influences, if
only for this reason, that it is forced upon the village children from
outside, while the older people have no chance to interest themselves in
it as they have in the Church teachings or in the daily paper. No
spontaneous movement, therefore, such as I have outlined in the other
cases, can be traced in regard to education; but I had a stronger reason
than that for omitting mention of it. To be quite pl