These institutions are continually watched over by the state, which is the official guardian of aristocratic education; they are occasionally assisted by grants from the public treasury, though they are chiefly endowed by the voluntary gifts of individual men. But these private gifts, like the public grants, come from the earnings of the whole nation. They are well endowed, superintended well, and richly honored; their chancellors and vice-chancellors are men of distinguished social rank; they have their representatives in Parliament; able men are sought out for teachers, professors, heads of houses; men of good ability, of masterly education, and the accomplishments of a finished gentleman; they are well paid, and copiously rewarded with honors and social distinction. Gentility favors these institutions; nobility watches over them, and royalty smiles upon them. In this threefold sunlight, no wonder that they thrive. The buildings at their service are among the most costly and elegant in the land; large museums are attached to them, and immense libraries; every printer in England, at his own cost, must give a copy of each book he publishes to Cambridge and Oxford. What wealth can buy, or artistic genius can create, is there devoted to the culture of this powerful class. But while the nobility and gentry are reckoned the flower of the state, the common people are only the leaves, and therefore thought of small importance in the political botany of the nation. Their education is amazingly neglected; is mainly left to the accidental piety of private Christians, to the transient charity of philanthropic men, or the "enlightened self-interest" of mechanics and small-traders, who now and then found institutions for the education of some small fraction of the multitude. But such institutions are little favored by the government, or the spirit of the dominant class; gentility does not frequent them, nor nobility help them, nor royalty watch over to foster and to bless. The Parliament, which voted one hundred thousand pounds of the nation's money for the queen's horses and hounds, had but thirty thousand to spare for the education of her people. No honor attends the educators of the people; no wealth is heaped up for them; no beautiful buildings are erected for their use; no great libraries got ready at the public charge; no costly buildings are provided. You wonder at the colleges and collegiate churches of Oxford and of Cambridge; at the magnificence of public edifices in London, new or ancient--the House of Parliament, the Bank, the palaces of royal and noble men, the splendor of the churches--but you ask, where are the school-houses for the people? You go to Bridewell and Newgate for the answer. All this is consistent with the idea of an aristocracy. The gentleman is the type of the state; and the effort of the state is towards producing him. The people require only education enough to become the servants of the gentleman, and seem