wanted instruction from anybody in the category we first
named, who had tried the high-school and college plan, he had only to go
and ask for it.

Very likely the man is his brother; at all events, he is somebody's
brother: and there is no difference in their social _status_ which makes
any practical difficulty in their meeting together, man-fashion, to
teach and to learn. But in saying all this, we speak of things which
London understands no more than it does the system of society of the
Chinese Empire. To begin: the thriving Oxford-Street retailer will tell
you very frankly, perhaps, that he had rather his son should not learn
to read, if he could only sign his name without learning. Reason: that
the father has observed that his older son read so much more of bad than
good, that he is left to doubt the benefits conferred by letters. I do
not mean, that, practically, the London tradesman's son does not learn
to read; but I do mean that that process meets this sort of prejudice.
Grant, however, that he does learn to read, and has appetite for more;
grant that he gets well through with A B C, and what follows; grant that
he can read well enough to read the translations from French filth which
his father is afraid of; but grant that his father and his mother,
working with the blessing of his God, have kept him pure enough to steer
clear of that temptation; grant that he becomes one-and-twenty, eager
for algebra, for chemistry, for Latin, or for Greek. What are you going
to do about it then? Then comes in the necessity which Mr. Maurice
wanted to meet,--and there comes in, by the same steps, the exceeding
difficulty of his experiment.

It is the difficulty of caste. I do not know how many castes there are
in England; but I should think there were about thirty-seven. Any member
of either of these finds it as hard to associate with a member of any
other as a Sudra does to associate with a Brahmin, or a Brahmin with a
Sudra. It is not that people are unwilling to condescend to the castes
below them. At least, it is not that chiefly. It is, quite as much or
more, that, with a good, solid, English pride, they do not care to be
snobbish, and do not choose to put themselves upon people who are above
them. They "know their place," they say. And, for a race which has as
good reason as the English for pride in its ability to stand firm,
to "know one's place" is a great thing to boast of. People who have
travelled on the Continent h