Social Life in England Through the Centuries

It is just the same with "tops"; they come and they go with absolute regularity. They come as if by magic, and by magic they disappear. When the errand-boy, who has left school a month or two, stops, basket on arm, to watch the game, you may be sure that it is the height of the season. When the ground is occupied by the little chaps who have just come up from the infant school, and the errand-boy passes whistling by on the other side, it is quite certain that the season is over and gone.

These are games that want no clubs, associations, nor subscriptions. Yet they are governed by time-honoured rules, which have never been written down, but must be strictly observed, or there is much talking and wrangling over the game.

Sports have an important place in the life of towns and villages nowadays; but, though cricket and football are old games really, they have not always been as popular as they are now. Cricket, in some form or other, was played in the thirteenth century when it was played with a crooked or clubbed stick called a "cryc". Indeed all games where a ball is used are more or less ancient. It seems to have been played at Guildford as early as 1598, but modern cricket only dates from the middle of the eighteenth century. Kent seems to have led the way, and Hampshire was the home of the game in 1774.

Tennis, or "fives" was a favourite game for many centuries, and it was quite a common thing in some places for it to be played against the church tower, which was a very convenient place for the game. Complaints were frequently made of the damage done to and around the churches by the playing of unlawful and disordered games of many kinds. At times attempts were made to put down the playing of tennis. But by the time of Queen Elizabeth it had come into favour, and the privilege of keeping tennis-courts was eagerly sought for, and the game became very popular indeed later on; but it went out of fashion again towards the end of the eighteenth century, only to be revived again in our own times.

It is only within the last forty years that football has become popular. Football of some kind has been played for many centuries, especially in the streets of towns. Kingston, Chester, and Dorking, amongst other places, have a custom of playing football on Shrove Tuesday. The story as to how the custom arose is the same in most of these places.

Far back in the ninth century a party of Danes ravaged the district and attacked the town. The townsmen made a brave stand against them till help came. Then the Danes were defeated, their leader slain, his head struck off, and kicked about the streets in triumph. That is said to have given rise to the custom; but it was a very ghastly football.

CHAPTER XLVIII
Roads

All roads lead to London and have done so for many a century, and so we find, as we should expect to do, that roads from all parts of the country converge towards it like the spokes of a wheel to its centre. The same sort of thing is seen in all towns of any size. Cross roads connect these main roads, and the nearer we are to the town the greater is the number of these, and they are often as busy and as important as the old main roads. But as we get away from the towns into the more rural districts, the lesser roads which connect the villages and hamlets with each other become fewer, more winding and straggling. There are also green lanes and field paths, and it is by following these, rather than the high roads, that the real beauties of the country can be seen. A person dashing along the main road in a motor-car, on a motor-cycle or a bicycle misses much which a man on foot, who is not in a tremendous hurry, is able to see and enjoy.

Not very long after the Romans left Britain, and the raids of Saxon tribes began to be felt, the roads, which during the Roman times had been kept in good repair, were neglected. Some of them gradually dropped out of use, and in the course of time grass, brushwood, and trees grew close up to the track and in places covered it, and it became in time a "lost" road. The roads which remained in use, through neglect grew worse and worse, and all through the Middle Ages very little was done to mend them. Travellers for the most part journeyed on horseback, and trains of mules and packhorses transported goods. Later on heavy wagons, drawn by teams of eight, ten, or a dozen horses were used, and frequently extra teams had to be hitched on at places where they got into difficulties and came to grief owing to the badness of the road. Often these long trains of wagons had to be "convoyed" by bands of armed men on horseback. To repair "foul and noyous highways" was regarded as a work of mercy, and we often find good people in the Middle Ages leaving money in their wills to be bestowed on the repair of a part of a highway. The religious houses in many cases were expected to keep up good roads in their own neighbourhood. There was once a hermit, who lived at Highgate, near London. He, at his own cost, had gravel dug from the top of Highgate Hill, and with it made a causeway down in the "hollow way" between Highgate and Islington. In the fourteenth century the Bishop of London made a way through his park at Highgate Hill across Finchley Common to Whetstone, near Barnet, because the highway was in such a dreadful condition. Those who used this road had to pay a toll.

After the dissolution of the monasteries the various parishes were expected to look after the parts of the great roads which ran through them, the landlords and tenants being required, according to the size of their holdings, to furnish men and horses, wagons and barrows, to work on the highways for so many days in each year. But for some centuries the work was done in a very shiftless, casual manner. The people in the parishes grumbled and did as little as they could, for, as they said, it was not they who wore out the roads, but the travellers from a distance who came backwards and forwards with all their heavy loads.

Traffic increased as the time went on, and it became necessary to provide for the wants of the many travellers along the roads. The old villages in very many cases stood away from the highways, and so we find new hamlets springing up on the main roads, and some of the new towns, like Uxbridge, Brentford, and Edgware in Middlesex, and Buntingford in Hertfordshire, had their origin in this way. Similar instance will be found in most other counties.

In Queen Elizabeth's reign the roads all over the country were bad; in some parts, owing to the nature of the soil, particularly bad. In the south, in the Weald district, the iron workers were ordered to mend their roads with the cinders from their furnaces, as the stone found in that neighbourhood was too soft for the purpose. But the roads did not greatly improve although the amount of traffic upon them increased.

Coaches came into use for long-distance travelling in the reign of Charles II. One began to run regularly between London and Bath in 1667—a three-days' journey if no accidents happened—and another started running from London to Portsmouth in the following year. About the middle of the eighteenth century every week there passed through the Borough from London on the way south, a hundred and forty-three stage-coaches, a hundred and twenty-one wagons, and a hundred and ninety-six carts and caravans. That was only the out-going traffic, there was quite as much traffic returning to the City.

It was about the year 1754 that a great improvement of roads began through the passing of the Turnpike Acts. The idea was that those people who actually used the roads should bear the cost of their upkeep, and companies, or "trusts", were formed to look after certain roads, have them properly made, and kept in repair. At certain distances along the road, a few miles apart, gates were set across the road with a little house by each, in which the toll-gate keeper lived, whose duty it was to open and close the gate to travellers and take the specified toll. Different kinds of vehicles had to pay different sums as toll, and so had flocks of sheep and droves of cattle when being moved from one part of the country to another. People actually living in the neighbourhood had certain rights to use the way toll free. The toll-gate keeper was usually a "crusty" person—a sort of spider lying in wait to catch flies—and very often when a traveller drove up to the gate in a hurry, anxious to get through, the toll-man would be particularly slow in opening the gates and in giving change.

In the "good old coaching days", noblemen and great folk travelled the long distances in their family coaches in great state, attended by servants; some riding before and after on horseback, and some hanging on behind the coach. Other wealthy people used to travel "post", and the carriages used were called "post-chaises". These were drawn by four or six horses, with a "post-boy" or postilion to each pair of horses. No matter how old he might be he was always called a post-boy. A great many old-established inns all over the country are still called "posting-houses". At these inns such carriages and horses to draw them, and post-boys to drive them, could be hired. These houses were about ten miles apart, and that distance was called a "stage"; and in posting the horses were changed at each "house" along the road. Nowadays, by the name posting-house we understand an inn where vehicles and horses can be hired; but probably not one of them could turn out a post-chaise, four horses and a couple of post-boys, at five minutes' notice.

There were many varieties of inns, often quite close together, from the big posting-houses down to the obscure little ale-house. These houses accommodated various classes of traffic. Even now, if you live near to one of the big main roads you will notice that some wagons draw up at particular houses on the road for "refreshment of man and beast"—the hay-carts have their own special stopping places, and so, too, have other sorts of heavy traffic; and they have kept to the custom of the road from one generation to another.

CHAPTER XLIX
Roads—Railways

In speaking of the roads in the last chapter, we have come right down to the present day and its needs; but we must go back a bit, as far as time is concerned, to say something about one special class of road which has played an important part in the making of England. The story of the roads began before the dawn of written history—ages and ages before. The story of the railways belongs, as we may say, only to yesterday.

When we speak of a railway in these days we picture to our minds a trackway, laid with parallel steel rails, along which long trains of carriages and trucks are drawn by a locomotive engine. The engine, indeed, is the first thing that a boy thinks of in connection with a railway; and no wonder, for the "iron horse" is a marvellous and interesting piece of machinery. But in the history of our modern railways the trackway, or the rail-way proper, comes first. There were railways long before there were locomotive engines; indeed, we shall not be far out if we say that there were railways in England a few centuries before steam-engines of any sort came into use.

It was up in the North, in the colliery districts by the Tyne, that the idea of tramways, along which trains of trucks, drawn by horses or mules, seem to have first come into use; and they can certainly be traced there as far back as the time of King Charles I (about the year 1630). The first railway which Parliament allowed to be laid in the South of England was the "Surrey Iron Railway". This connected Croydon with Wandsworth, and, later on, it was extended to Merstham. That was about the year 1801, and was intended to convey merchandise, not passengers. For a time it was of great service to mills and factories on the River Wandle. That was the first railway in that part of the country, and the trucks were drawn by donkeys!

Nearly every new invention has been scoffed at at first. Even in this present century, when the early experiments in the use of air-craft were being made, thousands of persons gravely shook their heads in disapproval, declaring that man was never intended to "fly". The Great War time has seen wonderful developments in air-craft, and so many "impossible" things have been achieved that we can realize, just a little bit, that air-craft has "a great future" before it, greater than we can as yet grasp.

It would be impossible to give here even a bare outline of the story of the English Railways, but the making of these railways and their use and development brought about rapidly many marvellous changes which have affected the life of the nation.

Seventy and eighty years ago, when railways were first being made, they excited a great deal more attention and interest than they do to-day. Railways were so new then, for one thing, and there were so many of them being made about the same time for another thing. There are hundreds of miles of railway going through quiet country districts, which were made many years ago, and there are thousands of people living in those districts who have been born since the railways were made. To them the railway is as much an everyday thing as the old parish church, the town pump, or the river. So far as they are concerned, the line has been always there—they never saw the country-side before the railway came. But in the years—say between 1830 and 1860—the work was watched with much interest, and it excited much talk, both wise and foolish.

What did the people who lived in a country village see? Long before the navvies came, for years in fact, the coming railway was talked about. The surveyor, with his attendants, carrying theodolite and measuring-chain, as he went about his work "taking levels", was very narrowly watched, and his sayings and doings were noted and discussed, time after time. In fact, not unfrequently the surveyor and his men had some very lively experiences, for there were lots of places in which they were regarded with suspicion, and all sorts of tricks were played upon them. Stephenson, when out surveying, was threatened with more than one ducking in a horse-pond; guns were fired at him, and he had to get through his work at all sorts of odd times. There was one surveyor who took a professional prize-fighter with him as his assistant, and he found work for him to do besides merely helping him in land-surveying. Bulls were sometimes turned loose in the fields in which surveyors were busy, and they had to leave in a hurry. Surveyors were quite used to meeting with all sorts of abuse, and being faced by angry men, armed with brickbats and pitchforks.

Then, when the road was staked out, and carts and men began to arrive, and a whole town of huts for the workers on the railway was set up on the broad hill-side, where the villagers and their fathers before them, time out of mind, had ploughed, and sowed, and harrowed, and reaped, and gleaned—tongues would wag still more, and curiosity would be intensified. When the huts were finished the navvies arrived. Strange folk they were to the villagers, speaking a language of their own, and living by themselves—strong, powerful men, doing great deeds of strength, capable of working hard, and very often of drinking hard, and of fighting hard. The quiet little inns and ale-houses became noisy and busy. The navvies brought change and excitement with them; and also, at times, mischief, strife, confusion, and drunkenness. For miles round the farmers would complain that they could get no labour for farm-work. Young men, attracted by the novelty, the higher wages, and the greater numbers, turned navvies, "learned their works" and left the old agricultural life of their forefathers for ever. Then, when the navvies set to work, the villagers saw them busy, like ants upon the hill-side, cutting a great cleft through it, many feet in depth. As they came along, yard by yard, they saw a rough tramway laid, along which long trains of trucks, drawn by a noisy, fussy little engine, were being drawn, some full of earth and gravel or stone which had been cut away.

Then, after many months' work, the men advanced out on to the open plain. For weeks and months trains of trucks were constantly coming laden with earth, which was tipped on to the lower ground, forming an embankment, which gradually came nearer and nearer the river bank. Down by the river bank, on the far side, and on the near side as well, were men digging for weeks at a time. Then, these made way for an army of brick layers and masons, and loads and loads of brick and stone were brought along the line, or dragged by horses through the old country lanes to the waterside. There, on each side of the stream, what looked like big towers were erected, as tall as the church tower, or taller perhaps, and still the earth day by day was being brought along the way and tipped, adding to the embankment yard by yard. Such earth, too; clay, perhaps, or earth of such kind as the oldest man in the parish had never seen in those parts before, because it had been brought from a place or places many miles away.

Then, when the brickwork on each side of the river was in position, there was the building of a bridge to watch. There were several huge arches of brick, or perhaps of stone, brought from far-off quarries. But what were those queer, lattice-work things, looking something like spiders' webs, which were brought down to the waterside? There was nothing like that ever seen in the village before. What did it mean? They saw these great iron lattice-work sections hoisted in the air by steam cranes and swung slowly up and round till they were placed in position, resting on the piers of masonry. It must have been a wonderful sight to watch the river being spanned by a huge bridge or by these girders, and to see the different sections being fitted and fastened together.

You may be sure that there was much shaking of heads and many prophecies that this sort of thing was a flying in the face of Providence—just as in our own time there has been over cycles, motor-cars, and air-craft. How could those great trains and heavy engines pass safely over such a flimsy-looking bridge as that? It would be sure to snap in the middle. And when an accident happened—and sad accidents did happen—many declared that it was the Almighty's judgment upon men for thinking that they knew better than their fathers before them.

But the railways brought many other changes. Those loads of earth brought from distant parts of the line not only altered the appearance of the country where they were deposited, but caused other alterations as well. Grass soon grew on the slopes of these embankments, but with the grass came up also strange weeds and plants. These seeded, the wind scattered the seeds, and, in the fields on either side of the line, these new weeds showed themselves the next season. For a year or two, probably, nobody noticed this very particularly; but, before very long, whole districts might be overrun with varieties of weeds never seen in that district before.

In some places marshes had to be drained, and, in consequence, many broad, shallow stretches of water disappeared. Such "sedgy pools" in quiet districts were once the haunt of many varieties of wild fowl. As the pools have disappeared the wild fowl which made these their haunt disappeared also, and with them the wild flowers and water-plants belonging thereto have died out as well. In much the same way insects have been imported in the loads of earth and found a home in a new district where they have, so to speak, "settled", and have done in some cases good, and in other cases harm, to the land.

Many cuttings through the beds of gravel and rocks have taught us something of the changes which have taken place in the earth's crust. It has been possible to examine the structure of the soil of many parts of England more thoroughly in the deep railway cuttings and tunnels than could have been done in any other way. Geologists have gathered much most valuable information from the soil and rock dug out in railway excavations.

This was what actually happened in a very large number of cases, and at the end of the eighteenth century there were many old boroughs which were governed by "close corporations"—the bulk of the people living in the borough having no voice in the management of the affairs of the town. All that was altered in the early part of the nineteenth century. Many of the old boroughs lost their privileges, as they had become such small unimportant places. All other boroughs now have regular elections of town councillors by the inhabitants each first of November. The councils elect the mayor on each 9th of November.

The mayor, and some of the inhabitants of the borough, are also magistrates and attend to police cases; while the town council looks after matters connected with sewers, lighting, paving, and cleansing the streets of the town. It has now also charge of educational affairs in many of the big towns, a committee of each county council being the educational authority in all other parts of the country.

In London and large towns, where there is much police court business, there are special magistrates, trained lawyers, who attend to nothing else.

In country places, for centuries, the manor court governed the manor; but gradually, and by Tudor times, most of the power of the manor court, or court leet as it was sometimes called, had passed into the hands of the Vestry. This consisted of the parish officers and rate-payers in the whole parish. It was called the vestry because its meeting-place was the vestry of the parish church, or even the church itself.

The relief of the poor and the care of the highways provided the vestry with most of its business. The churchwardens had special care of the property of the church, but in Tudor times they were also charged with the relief of the poor. To help them in this work two overseers, at least, in each parish, were chosen every year. All the rate-payers were liable to serve in turn if elected, unless they could show a good reason for not serving. The elections took place about Lady Day. The vestry fixed what rates were to be made, and the overseers collected them. But the overseers had to be admitted to their office, and all rates allowed, by two justices of the peace, before they were legal.

It became necessary, as the poor law business increased, to have constables to help the overseers in keeping an eye on strangers, vagrants and beggars who came into the parish. These, too, had to serve for one year. In big parishes they were assisted by a beadle, and had, with the help of all the inhabitants in turn, to keep watch and ward at night. Very unpleasant work they had to do in towns and places just outside towns. In London, and in many other towns also, to help the "watch" there were special officers called "watchmen", whose duty it was to parade the streets at night at regular intervals, and "call the hour"—"Past two o'clock, and a frosty morning". One of their duties was to arrest any disorderly characters whom they might come across on their rounds. But as each watchman carried a lighted lantern that, together with the noise he made, gave ample warning to that sort of people, who could usually, without much difficulty, get out of the watchman's way. When he did come upon the track of any of these gentry he would "sound his rattle" as a signal for the "watch" to come to his assistance, and, if they could, arrest the offenders. This duty of watching and warding had to be carried out until towards the middle of the nineteenth century, when our present system of police was established. Beadles and constables had to see to the whippings, which were so common, and to setting people in the stocks and the cage; to moving sick and diseased wretches on to the next parish, and other unpleasant duties.

The surveyors of the highways had to see that each person who was liable did his share of the work of the highways, or paid for having it done. But by far the most important business was that of the churchwardens and overseers. They had to settle in what houses the poor folk were to live, who were to look after them, what allowance was to be made for them. The poor usually had their money paid to them at church, monthly. Then the overseers had to see that every able-bodied man was at work, often having to provide the work, to place out apprentices, and to supply flax or wool for the women and children to spin. Sometimes the poor were boarded out; some of them lived in cottages, or in the poors' house which the parish built. Then, too, these officers had to relieve beggars, and persons passing through the parish.

This work of providing for the poor was very difficult and very anxious, especially at the end of the eighteenth and in the early part of the nineteenth century. It was quite a common practice for big parishes to "farm out" the care of the poor to the highest bidder. That is, a man would contract with the parish authorities to look after the relief of the poor in that parish for a certain sum of money per annum, for so many years.

Then poor law unions were formed, and union workhouses built, in which the helpless poor might be better cared for, and vagrants and wanderers find a night's lodging. These were looked after by Boards of Guardians, especially elected for that purpose. We have not a perfect plan yet, by any means, but much care and thought is being given to this question, and many changes, which we hope will be improvements in the administration of the Poor Law, are being taken in hand. The difficulties of how to deal with the poor who, through no fault of their own, cannot help themselves, and how to deal with those who are lazy and will not work, are very great.

The work of the old vestries has now passed to the parish councils, the district councils, and the county councils. The work is important, and has much to do with the welfare of our towns and villages. We must not expect that these bodies can do everything at once, or that they will make no mistakes. More people now than ever have a direct voice in the work of these various councils, and it is the duty of everyone to take a real interest in their work, and to strive to improve it in every possible way. If we know something of the past history of our towns and villages it will help us to form a right judgment concerning difficulties which have to be met in the present, and so to act that those who come after us may be able to go on building upon our work, that there may be nothing to undo, nothing to blame, but that future years may say of our times:—

"They knew how to work, and they worked on right principles." "Do justly, love mercy, walk humbly."

CHAPTER LI
Some Changes

There was not much alteration in the outward appearance of the villages and the "look" of the country round them for many centuries. Indeed even now many of the villages themselves are not greatly altered in their general arrangement. Down to the times of the Tudor kings the old land and manor customs had gone on since Saxon days, changing but very slowly. Many of the class which had been villeins in the Middle Ages had become yeomen; some had got lands of their own, and some land on the old manors, which they rented. But they did not alter very much the old way of treating the land, and it was only gradually that farm-houses sprang up away from the villages.

In some parts of the country these lonely farm-houses are more common than in others. There are, for instance, a good many in the Weald of Sussex which sprang up first as huts in forest clearings, and afterwards became houses with farm-buildings attached to them.

On the borders of great lonely heaths and commons we can often see very old and very small cottages, with walls of clay, or wood, or stone, according to the district in which they happen to be. Long ago some squatter built his little hut here, and out of pity, perhaps, or through carelessness, the lord of the manor took no notice. There he remained, year after year, until custom allowed him to look upon it as his own; and in time it actually became his private property. Such squatters in lonely places were often looked upon more or less with fear by the timid folk living in the distant village. They did not care to do or say anything to upset the stranger, fearing for the safety of their sheep, cattle, and poultry. Many little holdings and small farms began in this way.

Many of the farms, though they were separate holdings, still had strips in the big fields of the parish. The crops were sown and gathered according to the ancient customs, and the cattle turned into them and out on the waste lands at certain seasons, just as they had been in the Middle Ages.

But about the beginning of the eighteenth century there was a pretty general movement towards breaking up these big fields into separate parts, and letting each farmer have his portion to himself, so that he might know exactly what land was his and what belonged to his neighbour. So it came to pass that Enclosure Acts were passed for parish after parish. The old common arable fields were divided among those who had rights in them. Then many of the old wastes, heaths, commons, and marshes were treated in the same way.

That caused a great change in the appearance of the parish. Instead of the fields in long, straight strips, with unploughed balks between them, the strips belonging to each farmer were thrown into one, and hedgerows planted. In time they became smooth fields, separated from each other by hedges, in which grew here and there timber trees. The old cart-tracks, winding across and round the common fields, in time became lanes bounded by high hedges. The trackways across many of the old wastes and commons in a similar way were turned into lanes, and the waste broken up into fields. Still, a good deal of the waste land was left, and has never yet been enclosed. So far as we can see now, this is not likely to happen, because we feel more and more every year that, for the sake of the health and recreation of the people, it is absolutely necessary to preserve as many open spaces as possible. Some of these wastes and uncultivated, or only partially cultivated, lands have been brought under the spade and the plough during the war-time, and all over the country people have heartily set to work to increase our "homegrown" food supply.

good deal could be said about our forests and woodlands—their importance, and the part they have played in the making of England. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries especially, there was great attention paid to the cultivation of trees, and many of the owners of private park-lands did excellent work in promoting the growth of timber. But in the nineteenth century there seems to have been a considerable falling-off in this respect, and far-seeing men at times warned us that we needed to pay more attention to trees and forests and to the growth of timber. The terrible blizzard which swept over the country in March, 1916, brought down thousands and thousands of fine old trees, and the needs of our army and navy during the war-time has made sad havoc in parks and plantations, so that one of the urgent needs of the days in front of us is systematic attention to "afforestation", in order to "make good" the terrible wastage.

Hamlets have grown up away from the old village green, its church, and its manor-house. The roads were often so bad that horses frequently cast their shoes, tires came off wheels, and wheels came off carts and coaches; so under many "a spreading chestnut-tree" a little smithy and wheel-wright's shop arose. A smithy is always a centre of life and news, as everybody knows. You can see to-day, along many of our roads, sheds and shops being opened, where broken-down cycles and motor-cars can be repaired and supplied with odds and ends which they may happen to need. Round these hamlets have in time sprung up, and in scores of places the hamlet has become of more importance than the old village, and has grown into a little town, with new churches and chapels and public buildings.

In these war-years large numbers of quite new townships of enormous size have sprung up in connection with the making of munitions, and the provision of hospitals and camps, and as yet we know very little about them as a whole. Some are only temporary, but others have "come to stay", and in them new industries on a big scale will probably be developed. All this means change—change of appearance, change of ideas, change of methods.

Then there are the districts where new industries and manufactures have been planted. That is too large a subject to deal with here, but think of the great changes these have wrought on the face of the country in the coal and mineral districts of England in the last two hundred years!

Again, there are the railways. Notice how little townships have grown up round the railway stations, especially on the main lines in districts near a big town. Houses spring up for the hosts of people who, like streams of human ants, hurry to the station to catch the early morning trains, and, as the afternoon wears into evening, come again from the station to snatch a few hours' rest at home.

We have said nothing of

and the part they have had in the making of our towns and villages. This subject would require not only one but many books, and then we shall only just have begun to think about it, and to find out how little we know. Our wonderful Navy, our Merchant Sailors, our Fishermen—what do we not owe to them for what they have done for us in the terribly anxious times through which we have passed and are still passing! It is good, in spite of all the awful suffering, to have lived through these years, and to have seen something of what can be done by sacrifice of self, co-operation, and just "sticking to duty"—on land, on sea, under the sea, and in the air, in busy towns, and in quiet country places.

Yes, the life of our towns and villages is a very interesting subject. Nature and Man each works for and with the other; both are full of mystery, life, beauty, and high inspiration, if we could only use our eyes to see, our intelligence to understand, our hearts to sympathize, and our hands to work, for the things that are true, and lovely, and pure.