Think of it! Think of the advantage of friendly and free communication! Think of how much is gained, even among equals, by constant and unrestrained intercourse! Reckon the inestimable profit that a man of minor attainments can derive from free and easy association with his superior, and _vice versâ_. And then ponder the thousands of unbreakable links that such relationships would have forged between the classes in every village, town, city, country and province throughout the Empire! When is it that a man ceases to believe in natural distinctions between men? When is it he begins to suspect that there is nothing above him?--Only when, for a very long time, he has been deprived of any intimate knowledge of superiority, or of any association with superiority in his own form. Can we wonder at the absurd decoy cries of modern Europe,--at the cry for Equality above all? Can we marvel any longer at class hatred? How does a man best learn [p211] the fundamental law of natural inequality?--Only by moving out of his circle and finding a sufficiently friendly welcome when he does so, to be able to learn from what he sees. The principle of cleavage instead of classification,--this is one of the vices for which we have to thank the vulgar rich of the past, and their kith and kin of the present day. But it is one of the first brutal stupidities that must be abolished if anything approaching an orderly and harmonious society is to be established. Another salient error of modern society, at least in England, has been the consistent indifference shown by successive Governments towards the steady encroachment of the huge cities of the nation upon their rural environs. Like monster cankers these vast urban complexes of England are allowed to spread north, south, east and west, year in, year out, as if for all the world, it were an advantage, a boon, in fact the most unspeakable blessing, that every inch of green pasture land, of golden cornfield, should be converted as quickly as possible into muddy, smoky, stuffy and hideous thoroughfares. If town life were so eminently desirable, if the kind of man and woman who live and breed amid city and suburban shoddy, were without question the proudest examples of the nation’s blood; if town occupations, town temptations, and town pastimes were the healthiest, the most ennobling, the most productive of useful virtues, we might suspect the various Governments, that have tolerated the spread of this urban miasma, to have winked their eye knowingly at what was, [p212] after all, only a sentimental grievance, a sort of poet’s plaint, an artist’s loss of picturesque compositions.