Though the rich may not know it or wish it,
there is almost as great a distinction of "caste"
in England as there is in India. It is something
more than money that divides the rich
from the poor, and the poor from the rich; and
something else than money or education—or
the absence of one or both—that separates
trades from each other, or one class of work-
people from another; and it is exceedingly
difficult for one whose dress, manners, and
conversation mark him as belonging to the professional,
commercial, or gentlemanly classes to
establish friendly and intimate relations with
the peasantry and lower orders of labourers, or
to get at the secrets of their moral and
intellectual life. To call upon poor working people
in their homes, suggests to them that you have
a "mission"—religious or otherwise—to reform
or lecture them, and they immediately—whether
male or female—put on a mental armour to defy
you. They do not like to be preached at, or
lectured, or patronised, by "unco' guid" or
"rigidly righteous" people; and though they
will most likely take your money if you offer it,
you will get but little insight into their mode of
life or habits of thought, if you talk to them for
a twelvemonth. They are on their guard against
you, and will not admit you into their
confidence—strive as hard as you may. If you
sit with them in their beerhouses, they
discover at a glance, in whatever way you may
have dressed yourself, that you are not one
of them; and they look upon you as a flock of
sheep might look upon a wolf, or a congregation
of crows upon an alien popinjay, who had
obtruded into their clan or companionship. But
when you meet with them on the country roads
and tramp along with them for miles, not having
forced yourself upon their company, but offering
it or accepting it, as from man to man, you
may often make the acquaintance of some very
excellent people, from whom you can
sometimes learn more than they can learn from
you. If they have not the knowledge of books—
and even in this respect some of them are by no
means ignorant—they have the knowledge of
things: and if they look upon man and nature,
fate and circumstance, and on the rights and
wrongs of the poor, with eyes different from
yours, and, perhaps, from a totally opposite
point of view, you acquire a new kind of
experience, and, it may be, learn something of the
previously unsuspected fires and forces that lie
smouldering and latent in the hearts of the
multitude, of which our lawgivers are often wholly
unaware, and which they would not, perhaps,
credit on any authority but that of their own
experience. "It may be some entertainment,"
says Robert Burns, in a letter to his friend
Robert Riddel, of Glenriddel, "to a curious
observer of human nature to see how a plough-
man thinks and feels under the pressure of love,
ambition, anxiety, and grief, with like cares and
passions, which, however diversified by the
modes and manners of life, operate, I believe,
pretty much alike on all the species." Agreeing
with Robert Burns in this particular, not only as
regards ploughmen, but labouring men of every
description, I never neglect an opportunity to
exchange ideas with them, and to inquire how
and on what they live; what opinions they
form of their own class, and of the classes above
and below them; what notions, if any, they
have of the government of their own or other
countries; what are their enjoyments, their
sorrows, their prejudices; whether they attend
church or chapel; and what are their ideas of
the divine government of the world, and their
hopes, if they have any, of a hereafter.

One of the most respectable men I know,
and whose acquaintance I made upon the highway
where he does his daily work, is employed
by a road contractor to keep three miles of the
public road in order. The road winds through
a beautiful country, within thirty miles of
London, and need not be more particularly
specified, lest my good friend the labourer
should be pointed out too particularly to the
notice of the public of his own neighbourhood.
He bears an aristocratic name, and were he
dressed in the garb of a gentleman would
present a distinguished if not an aristocratic
appearance. Pass him when I will, he is always
at his work. He labours as if he liked his
employment; he never loiters, or dozes, or takes
unfair advantage of his paymaster to "scamp"
the job in hand. He clears the pathway from,
weeds, trims the hedges, sees that the water-
courses are clear, looks to the drains, scrapes
the horse manure into little heaps by the road-
side to be carted away by the agencies appointed
for the purpose; levels the roadway wherever
it gets worn into holes or ruts, by shovelling
in the necessary amount of macadam; and
every day has enough to occupy him in all
these matters, and fill up the requisite number
of hours that he is bound to labour. He has
got, it seems, to be very much attached to his
three miles of woodland road. He knows every
tree on either side, and how old it is; he can
point out those that are the favourite haunts of
the squirrel and the dormouse; and he is
acquainted with the common but not with the
botanical names of all the hedge flowers and
herbs in his district. He is close upon sixty years
of age, but looks older, and is seldom to be seen
without his short pipe in his mouth, unless
when he is spoken to.

"What wages do you earn, Mr. Stanley?"
I one day asked him. Stanley is not his name,
but he has one quite as aristocratic.

"Two shillings a day."

"You have a wife and family?"

"A wife and five children."

"Are any of the children old enough to earn
anything?"

"Not one. The oldest is only ten."

"And how can you feed them all, on two
shillings a day?"

"God knows," he replied, "I don't. The
wife manages somehow to get them bread and
potatoes, though scarcely enough, and a little
tea."

"No meat?"