In no country is this danger so great as it is in England, where the generally expensive manner of living, and the prevalent desire to keep families in an ideally perfect state of physical comfort, produce an absorption in business which in all but the rarest instances leaves no margin for intellectual labor. There are, no doubt, some remarkable examples of men earning a large income by a laborious profession, who have gained reputation in one of the sciences or in some branch of literature, but these are very exceptional cases. A man who works at his profession as most Englishmen with large families have to work, can seldom enjoy that surplus of nervous energy which would be necessary to carry him far in literature or science. I remember meeting an English tradesman in the railway between Paris and the coast, who told me that he was obliged to visit France very frequently, yet could not speak French, which was a great deficiency and inconvenience to him. "Why not learn?" I then asked, and received the following answer: "I have to work at my business all day long, and often far into the night. When the day's work is over I generally feel very tired, and want rest; but if I don't happen to feel quite so tired, then it is not work that I need, but recreation, of which I get very little. I never feel the courage to set to work at the French grammar, though it would be both pleasant and useful to me to know French; indeed, I constantly feel the want of it. It might, perhaps, be possible to learn from a phrase-book in the railway train, but to save time I always travel at night. Being a married man, I have to give my whole attention to my business." A solicitor with a large practice in London held nearly the same language. He worked at his office all day, and often brought home the most difficult work for the quiet of his own private study after the household had gone to bed. The little reading that he could indulge in was light reading. In reality the profession intruded even on his few hours of leisure, for he read many of the columns in the _Times_ which relate to law or legislation, and these make at the end of a few years an amount of reading sufficient for the mastery of a foreign literature. This gentleman answered very accurately to M. Taine's description of the typical Englishman, absorbed in business and the _Times_. In these cases it is likely that the effect of marriage was not inwardly felt as a deviation; but when culture has been fairly begun, and marriage hinders the pursuit of it, or makes it deviate from the chosen path, then there is often an inward consciousness of the fact, not without its bitterness.