Sir Michael Foster, in a recent Presidential Address to the British Association, said that, "the appliances of science have, as it were, covered with a soft cushion the rough places of life, and that not for the rich only but also for the poor." It is not, however, every kind of progress, everywhere, in every department of human knowledge, in which the reader is here concerned, but merely with such things as Esdras says, which have "passed by us in daily life," and which every ordinary Englishman has observed or knows. If the question be asked whether the condition of the working class has improved in proportion to that of the middle and upper class of our time, the answer must be it has not. But that is not the question considered here. The question is, "Are the working class to-day better off than their fathers were?" The answer already given is Yes. Let the reader think what, in a general way, the new advantages are. The press is free, and articulate with a million voices--formerly dumb. Now a poor man can buy a better library for a few shillings than Solomon with all his gold and glory could in his day; or than the middle class man possessed fifty years ago. Toleration--not only of ideas but of action, is enlarged, and that means much--social freedom is greater, and that means more. The days of children are happier, schoolrooms are more cheerful, and one day they will be educated so as to fit them for self-dependence and the duties of daily life. Another change is that the pride in ignorance, which makes for impotence, is decreasing, is no longer much thought of among those whose ignorance was their only attainment. Not less have the material conditions of life improved. Food is purer--health is surer--life itself is safer and lasts longer. Comfort has crept into a million houses where it never found its way before. Security can be better depended upon. The emigrant terror has gone. Instead of sailing out on hearsay to an unknown land and finding himself in the wrong one, or in the wrong part of the right country, as has happened to thousands, the emigrant can now obtain official information, which may guide him rightly. Towns are brighter, there are more public buildings which do the human eye good to look upon. Means of recreation are continually being multiplied. Opportunity of change from town to country, or coast, fall now to the poorest Not in cattle trucks any more. Life is better worth living. Pain none could escape is evadable now. Parks are multiplied and given as possessions to the people. Paintings and sculpture are now to be seen on the Sunday by workmen, which their forefathers never saw, being barred from them on the only day when they could see them.