his head save what was put there by the grass and the butterflies,
and the green trees and the blue sky? And therefore I do press
earnestly, both on employers and employed, the incalculable value
of athletic sports and country walks for those whose business
compels them to pass the day in the heart of the city; I press on
you, with my whole soul, the excellency of the early-closing
movement; not so much because it enables young men to attend
mechanics' institutes, as because it enables them, if they choose,
to get a good game of leap-frog. You may smile; but try the
experiment, and see how, as the chest expands, the muscles harden,
and the cheek grows ruddy and the lips firm, and sound sleep
refreshes the lad for his next day's work, the temper will become
more patient, the spirits more genial; there will be less tendency
to brood angrily over the inequalities of fortune, and to accuse
society for evils which as yet she knows not how to cure.

There is a class, again, above all these, which is doubtless the
most important of all; and yet of which I can say little here--the
capitalist, small and great, from the shopkeeper to the merchant
prince.

Heaven forbid that I should speak of them with aught but respect.
There are few figures, indeed, in the world on which I look with
higher satisfaction than on the British merchant; the man whose
ships are on a hundred seas; who sends comfort and prosperity to
tribes whom he never saw, and honourably enriches himself by
enriching others. There is something to me chivalrous, even
kingly, in the merchant life; and there were men in Bristol of
old--as I doubt not there are now--who nobly fulfilled that ideal.
I cannot forget that Bristol was the nurse of America; that more