acquired. But as he is distinctly a creature of the city; as all
city influences bear at once on him more than on any other class,
so we see in him, I think, more than in any class, the best and
the worst effects of modern city life. The worst, of course, is
low profligacy; but of that I do not speak here. I mean that in
the same man the good and evil of a city life meet. And in this
way.

In a countryman like me, coming up out of wild and silent
moorlands into a great city, the first effect of the change is
increased intellectual activity. The perpetual stream of human
faces, the innumerable objects of interest in every shop-window,
are enough to excite the mind to action, which is increased by the
simple fact of speaking to fifty different human beings in the day
instead of five. Now in the city-bred youth this excited state of
mind is chronic, permanent. It is denoted plainly enough by the
difference between the countryman's face and that of the townsman.
The former in its best type (and it is often very noble) composed,
silent, self-contained, often stately, often listless; the latter
mobile, eager, observant, often brilliant, often self-conscious.

Now if you keep this rapid and tense mind in a powerful and
healthy body, it would do right good work. Right good work it
does, indeed, as it is; but still it might do better.

For what are the faults of this class? What do the obscurantists
(now, thank God, fewer every day) allege as the objection to
allowing young men to educate themselves out of working hours?

They become, it is said, discontented, conceited, dogmatical.