engineering works; or, again, like Herschel and Fraunhofer, they added
to the wide field of scientific knowledge; or finally, like Millet and
Gibson, they beautified the world with their noble and inspiring
artistic productions. But in every one of these cases, the men whose
lives we have been here considering did actually rise, sooner or later,
from the class of labourers into some other class socially and
monetarily superior to it. Though they did great good in other ways to
others, they did still as a matter of fact succeed themselves in
quitting the rank in which they were born, and rising to some other rank
more or less completely above it.

Now, it will be clear to everybody that so long as our present social
arrangements exist, it must be impossible for the vast mass of labouring
men ever to do anything of the sort. It is to be desired, indeed, that
every labouring man should by industry and thrift secure independence in
the end for himself and his family; but however much that may be the
case, it will still rest certain that the vast mass of men will
necessarily remain workers to the last; and that no attempt to raise
individual working men above their own class into the professional or
mercantile classes can ever greatly benefit the working masses as a
whole. What is most of all desirable is that the condition, the aims;
and the tastes of working men, as working men, should be raised and
bettered; that without necessarily going outside their own ranks, they
should become more prudent, more thrifty, better educated, and wider-
minded than many of their predecessors have been in the past. Under such
circumstances, it is surely well to set before ourselves some examples
of working men who, while still remaining members of their own class,
have in the truest and best sense "raised themselves" so as to attain
the respect and admiration of others whether their equals or superiors
in the artificial scale. Dr. Smiles, who has done much to illustrate the