Not only does the necessity for such an undertaking appear in England as it does not here, but the difficulty of it is, on a moderate calculation, ten thousand times greater than it is here. Here, in the first place, if the "working-man" as a boy has felt any particular fancy for algebra or Greek or Latin, (and those fancies, in a fast country, are apt to develop before the boy is eighteen,) he has e'en gone to a high-school, and, if he wanted, to a "college," where, if he had not the means himself, some State Scholarship or Education Society has floated him through, and he has gained his fill of algebra, Latin, or Greek, or is on the way to do so. Or, if he have not done this,--if the appetite for these things, or for physical science, historical science, or political science, has developed itself a little later in life, he has hoarded up books for a few years, and has made himself meanwhile rather more necessary to his master than he was before, so that, when he says, some day, "I think we must arrange so that I can leave the shop earlier in the afternoon," the master has bowed submiss, and the incipient chemist, historian, or politician has worked his own sweet will. Or, thirdly, if he 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.