The recreations of the working-man, apart from the tavern, were boxing and dog-fighting. Single-stick, wrestling, quarter-staff, cock-fighting, had to a great extent gone out. Boxing remained, every man knew how to handle his fists: you may remember that in _Tom Brown at Oxford_, there is a serious discussion on the knotty question whether a gentleman can, or cannot, always lick a cad. Dear me, this kind of talk is now so old-world. However, a man was always supposed to be ready to strip and engage--gentleman or cad. Dickens’s stories contain many instances of the rough-and-ready “turn up.” The change is a gain from one point of view; it is a loss, from another, that the noble art of self-defence has fallen out of practice; it is, further, a gain as well as a loss, that it shows signs of returning to favour. There are still fairs left. Several fairs were held in the neighbourhood of London. Bartholomew’s, degenerated into a scene of drunkenness and disorder, still continued. Greenwich Fair continued, and Deptford Fair; there was also a fair at Barnet; but the fairs had practically gone out of the life of the country. It was a mark of the times that the working-classes no longer delighted in the noise and the ribaldry that disgraced the later years of the London fairs. I have spoken of education in the rural districts. Long before the young rustic could learn to read, the townsmen had the chance of some education. There were many charity schools: there were the schools of the National Society and of the British and Foreign Society: there were also the Sunday Schools. Criminal procedure does not, perhaps, affect the average civilian. At the same time one learns that before 1836 it was actually forbidden that a prisoner should defend himself before the jury by counsel. Imagine, if you can, a timid, shrinking girl, called upon to plead for her life in open court after being maddened by jargon which she did not understand and formalities which only filled her with bewilderment. It is said that the judges themselves repaired this evil: it is quite possible. Our judges have always been superior to the laws they have had to administer; but then the prisoner was at the mercy of the judge; he might, or he might not, find a remedy for the speechlessness and the incapacity of the prisoner.