The respect and admiration with which George Stephenson and Joseph Paxton were invariably treated was largely due to the fact that they were self-taught men. And when Joseph Hume died in 1855, _Punch_, who had so often chaffed him for his love of figures and returns, while applauding his attack on "gold lace" and extravagance, paid fitting homage to the perseverance which enabled him to fight his way up from poverty and obscurity, to his rugged honesty, his hard-won triumphs, and his honourable participation in all victories over wrong in Church and State. An alarming ignorance, however, was not monopolized by the lower orders. In his scheme for the reform of the House of Lords _Punch_ suggests that peers should only be admitted to the Upper House after an examination in the three R's, history, geography and political economy. Geography even in our own enlightened days remains a stumbling-block to Ministers, even Prime Ministers. Disraeli's ignorance of arithmetic on the occasion of his appointment as Chancellor of the Exchequer in the Derby Cabinet is a frequent source of ribaldry in _Punch_, who suggested the establishment of an infants' school for the new Cabinet. So recently as the eve of the twentieth century a Chancellor of the Exchequer was reported to have been so ignorant of decimals that he asked what was meant by those "damned dots." [Sidenote: _The Education Bill of 1856_] Reverting to elementary education, we can find no better commentary on its progress in the mid 'fifties than two extracts from _Punch's_ "Essence of Parliament" in the spring of 1856:--