shall find enough, and more than enough, to repay the devotion of a
lifetime. Life no doubt is paved with enjoyments, but we must all expect
times of anxiety, of suffering, and of sorrow; and when these come it is
an inestimable comfort to have some deep interest which will, at any rate
to some extent, enable us to escape from ourselves.

"A cultivated mind," says Mill--"I do not mean that of a philosopher, but
any mind to which the fountains of knowledge have been opened, and which
has been taught in any tolerable degree to exercise its faculties--will
find sources of inexhaustible interest in all that surrounds it; in the
objects of nature, the achievements of art, the imaginations of poetry,
the incidents of history, the ways of mankind, past and present, and their
prospects in the future. It is possible, indeed, to become indifferent to
all this, and that too without having exhausted a thousandth part of it;
but only when one has had from the beginning no moral or human interest in
these things, and has sought in them only the gratification of curiosity."

I have been subjected to some good-natured banter for having said that I
looked forward to a time when our artisans and mechanics would be great
readers. But it is surely not unreasonable to regard our social condition
as susceptible of great improvement. The spread of schools, the cheapness
of books, the establishment of free libraries will, it may be hoped,
exercise a civilizing and ennobling influence. They will even, I believe,
do much to diminish poverty and suffering, so much of which is due to
ignorance and to the want of interest and brightness in uneducated life.
So far as our elementary schools are concerned, there is no doubt much
difficulty in apportioning the National Grant without unduly stimulating
mere mechanical instruction. But this is not the place to discuss the
subject of religious or moral training, or the system of apportioning the
grant.