A great want of our age is education for the middle classes. We want to have them taught to believe in something else than the shop or the desk. We want them to believe the mind as fully entitled to their care as the body, and the money-bag but poor and impotent compared with the well-spent life. We would publish the all-important truth—a truth that shall live and fructify when the great city in which we write shall have become a desert-waste—the truth that man was made in the image of his maker, and that the heart that beats within is capable of divinity itself. We may have drawn in dark colours our national state. We fear the picture is but too true; and that till something be done to burst the bonds of habit, and educate the youth in our shops, the picture will continue to be true. We write not to deprecate the land of our birth; it is one dear to us by every remembrance of the past and hope for the future. Because we thus cling to it do we deplore and expose what we deem to be wrong, and that our social condition may be healthy, that our civilization may be complete that our faith may be a living leavening power, do we ask the emancipation of the sons and daughters of trade—that that long-looked-for hour may quickly come. CHAPTER XVI. THE LONDON VOLUNTEERS. In spite of Lord Palmerston’s injudicious attempt to check the rifle movement in its infancy, there can be no doubt now but that it is a complete success. The appeal to the martial spirit—more or less strong in the hearts of all Englishmen—has been most cheerfully responded to. Something of the kind was evidently required to excite the energies and to occupy the leisure hours of our numerous youth. We are always in danger of becoming too peaceable a folk. Our avocations, all of a mercantile or professional character,—our amusements, less out-door, and more sedentary, than ought to be the case,—the very humane spirit which pervades all English society,—our enormous wealth; all tend to make us peaceably disposed. None can be alarmed at our warlike demonstrations. No nation in Europe need fear a British invasion. No foreign government can possibly pretend that the British government harbours designs of active hostility against any European power. Indeed, the naturally and necessarily peaceful intentions of this country are candidly acknowledged by the most eminent men in France itself. Michel Chevalier, in his account of a recent visit to this country, has done ample justice to our moderation, and to our desire to be at peace with all the world.