The first thing which Mr. Bacon had done after taking possession of his vicarage, and obtaining such information about his parishioners as the more considerate of them could impart, was to enquire into the state of the children in every household. He knew that to win the mother's good will was the surest way to win that of the family, and to win the children was a good step toward gaining that of the mother. In those days reading and writing were thought as little necessary for the lower class, as the art of spelling for the class above them, or indeed for any except the learned. Their ignorance in this respect was sometimes found to be inconvenient, but by none, perhaps, except here and there by a conscientious and thoughtful clergyman, was it felt to be an evil,—an impediment in the way of that moral and religious instruction, without which men are in danger of becoming as the beasts that perish. Yet the common wish of advancing their children in the world, made most parents in this station desire to obtain the advantage of what they called book-learning for any son who was supposed to manifest a disposition likely to profit by it. To make him a scholar was to raise him a step above themselves. _Qui ha les lettres, ha l'adresse Au double d'un qui n'en ha point._[1] Partly for this reason, and still more that industrious mothers might be relieved from the care of looking after their children, there were few villages in which, as in Mr. Bacon's parish, some poor woman in the decline of life and of fortune, did not obtain day-scholars enough to eke out her scanty means of subsistence. [Footnote 1: BAIF.] The village Schoolmistress, such as Shenstone describes in his admirable poem, and such as Kirke White drew from the life, is no longer a living character. The new system of education has taken from this class of women the staff of their declining age, as the spinning jennies have silenced the domestic music of the spinning wheel. Both changes have come on unavoidably in the progress of human affairs. It is well when any change brings with it nothing worse than some temporary and incidental evil; but if the moral machinery can counteract the great and growing evils of the manufacturing system, it will be the greatest moral miracle that has ever been wrought.