The cigar mentioned at the close of the last chapter had come to an end. This brought me to the question of where I would go next? Where and how? Had I stood alone in the world, that is to say, on this afternoon at Davos am Platz, without having to consider the incapacities and wishes of so uncertain an instrument as my neophyte porter, I should by whatever conveyance might have offered have sent my belongings some dozen miles down the valley, and have followed them on foot. Now, however, I was tied to him, and there were symptoms that he was not disposed for any more work to-day. First he had in the morning complained much of the ascent of the Strela; and again when we had arrived at Davos am Platz, I had told him that we would have a halt of two hours, and would then decide on what was to be done with the rest of the day: but he had allowed nearly three hours to pass before his reappearance. This I interpreted to mean that he wished to shorten the afternoon’s work as much as possible; or, if he could so manage it, to prevent anything at all being undertaken in the afternoon. These, then, were disturbing elements in the question: if I were to proceed on foot, he might be somewhat crippled for future work, or demoralized from a consciousness that his devices had been seen through and thwarted. I decided, therefore, to go on that evening to Alveneu Bad, 16¹⁄₂ miles, by char. We soon found that at this time of day our inquiries were too late: all the public vehicular resources of the place had been taken up by the numerous afternoon excursionists. I then bethought myself of trying its private resources in this matter. In this, by the assistance of the porter of the Kurhaus, I was successful; and at 5 P.M. we started for Alveneu Bad in the private carriage of one of the magnates of the little town. The carriage and harness were quite new, and the horse was, evidently, well cared for. The good man and his wife stood by to see the departure of their lately acquired turn-out, and to impress to the last on the driver the necessity of care and caution. When we had been gone about half an hour, a passing shower drifted down the valley. I hoped that those drops did not reach as far as Davos am Platz, that they might not be felt by the anxious old couple, though I was sure that even in that case their hearts would revive within them when they thought of the 22 francs they were to receive to-morrow morning.

There is a new and excellent post-road all the way to the Bad which is on the new Albula road. This new Davos road is a continuation of that of the Prätigäu. It is carried at first along smooth prairies, backed by lofty wooded mountains. The stream by its side is the Landwasser, which as it drains many valleys has a considerable volume of water. At last the mountains close in, and completely squeeze out the prairies. There is then no more room for the road, which is, therefore, at this point carried up and over the mountain on the right bank of the Landwasser to Wiesen. Beyond Wiesen the road runs along the mountain flanks above, and some way back from, the Landwasser. This gives you commanding views of the ranges and summits to your left between the parallel valleys of Davos and the Engadin. The scene is impressive. Below you is the deep valley of the Landwasser. Towards the bottom on the opposite side are bright green prairies and dull green pine woods; these are overtopped by lofty mountains, streaked by long deep slaty-coloured couloirs from top to bottom. Other mountains, behind these, seen through gaps, after showing a zone of black rock, were capped with snow from which the rays of the western sun were now gleaming. One in particular appeared to invite climbing, for its zone of black rock slanted up with what seemed to be a practicable slope to the snowy summit: of course, however, till a trial has been made one can only speak of such appearances as possibilities. In several places along the valley the new road, though only just completed, had already led to the erection of new houses and hotels. This will go on everywhere in Switzerland; and by the time all the available sites are occupied there, tourists will have begun to flood the Tyrol and overflow into the Carpathians.

Our horse was willing, and the driver not unwilling, and so we reached the Bad before dark. I found here about fifty people just seated down to supper. I was told that they were chiefly Swiss, many of them from the eastern cantons. Family parties, in which the middle-aged element largely entered, were in preponderance. It was evident that they had much to say to each other; and saying this probably did them as much good as drinking the waters.

August 6.—Having been delayed three quarters of an hour by the dilatoriness, or the scheming, of the circumnavigator, did not get under weigh till 5.45. As we left the house a funeral was passing the door. To us this might seem an early and a cold hour for taking a deceased relative to his last earthly resting place. We might almost feel as if there was in such an arrangement something hurried, some impatience, an unfair curtailment of his last glimpse of the sun. But, then, it reduces to a minimum the demand which the ceremony must make on the working hours of the mourners’ day. We were now on the Albula road. It here skirts the stream of the Albula, which our late companion, the Landwasser had now joined. In a little more than an hour, Tiefenkasten was reached, where the Oberhalbstein Rhine enters the Albula. In an hour more we were on the bridge of Solis. Upon this part of the road we crossed a long array of diligences and chars. They were from Thusis, which had been reached from Reichenau on the Coire-Andermatt road, or by the Splügen; and were on their way to the Engadin by the route either of the Albula, or of the Julier.

At the bridge of Solis you cross the Albula, chafing and fretting below you at a depth of 250 feet. From this point you enter on the new Schyn-strasse, a grand piece of road, and similar in character to its neighbour, the Via Mala of the Splügen route. For three miles, or more, it is grooved out, or built upon the side of a narrow deep ravine, several hundred feet above the rushing, tumbling Albula, and with several times as many hundred feet above the road; sheer and sharply shelving precipices below and above; and with the corresponding opposite parallel side of the ravine closely confronting you, to demonstrate to you how utterly impracticable was the construction of the road along which you are walking with unusual ease, for it has throughout been engineered, with scarcely any gradients, on one general level. Of course a road of this kind must have some tunnels, and, in places where it is crossed by couloirs, galleries to protect it from being occasionally buried, or carried away; and its bridges must be made capable of withstanding storm-swollen torrents. Some will think it worth while to give a passing glance at these bridges to see what were the difficulties the engineer had to contend with, and the dangers he had to provide against. In one place I saw that provision had been made below a bridge, to prevent the torrent from deepening its bed back to the bridge in any direction except at right angles to a line drawn across the centre of the arch of the bridge, because a deviation from this line to the right, or left, would have destroyed the foundation of one or other of the piers of the bridge. A torrent towards the western end of the Strasse had cut the strata of rock over which it fell into a somewhat regular flight of steps. The layers of rock were two or three feet thick, and each was cut down perpendicularly by the stream, some three or four feet in advance of the one which was above it. So almost down to the bridge, where the stream entirely disappeared, in consequence of the stratification having here been abruptly tilted into an inclination that was not far from perpendicular; and here the torrent had formed for itself a channel by eroding only one of the layers of rock, and that to such a depth that the layers on our right completely overlapped and concealed the stream which had been carried down some way below in the eroded layer.

The ravine of the Schyn nowhere admits of any kind of cultivation, not even of an occasional patch of grass. Pines are its only produce. Among these I saw towards its western extremity many fine specimens of the silver fir, which I had nowhere previously noticed. I do not see why the Douglas pine, one of the most rapid in growth, and valuable as timber, of all the conifers, should not be grown largely in Switzerland. Some of its moist and sheltered valleys would seem to be the very stations that might in every respect be exactly suited for it. It has been proved that it will grow rapidly in such places. In this, as in many other ravines, a track for removing the trees that have been felled below the road, is out of the question. If, therefore, they are to be used for fuel, they are cut into pieces, six feet in length, and pitched into the torrent, which transports them rapidly to their destination. Fuel that has been torrent-borne in this way may readily be distinguished, as it stands piled against the walls of the houses, by the manner in which the ends of the pieces have been bruised and frayed. If, however, what has been felled is to be used as timber for building, the length required would make it impossible to float it down such narrow, rocky, and tortuous streams. In this case winter must be waited for, and when it has frozen the torrent, and buried it beneath the snow, the hardy and industrious peasants avail themselves of the temporary pathway nature has provided, and haul their timber along it. But these winter pathways are not free from danger, for it sometimes happens that a rock, detached by the frost from an overhanging summit, falls on those who are at work below.

As you descend from the Schyn to Thusis everything is changed. You again find yourself among prairies, fruit trees, and scattered dwellings. A broad green valley lies before you expanding to the right and left, in which are the towns of Sils and Thusis; and beyond the valley is lifted up the broad shelving expanse of the eastern side of the Heinzenberg, a wide, unbroken expanse of trees and prairies, enlivened with many villages, and innumerable detached châlets. You see that every rood of it is turned to the best account, and that it is on the spot supporting a large and industrious population.

As you descend you pass the still solid remains of an old castle on the right, perched on a cliff overlooking the Albula. Another is above you on the mountain side. At the foot of the descent you reach the little town of Sils, separated by three-quarters of a mile of bottom land from Thusis, which you see on the first rise of the opposite bank, beyond the Hinter-Rhein, the stream of the valley. A third old castle, that of Hohen Rhätien, looks down on Thusis from the brow of a cliff, 400 feet above the stream, on what is still your side of the valley. As you cross the bridge, on its up stream side you see the Rhine rushing beneath it in a flood of whitish green. Immediately below the bridge the inky Nolla, more inky than the Tyne at Newcastle, its blackness is that of the skin of an unfledged rook, pitches its torrent of defilement into the whitish green stream. You feel that this is an act of disrespect to a main branch of so famous a river. Two hundred, or so, yards further on you pass a second bridge, that of the Nolla itself. You now see above the bridge what a vast amount of small black shaly débris, the cause of its inkiness, this stream brings down in its course from the summits of the Heinzenberg, and of the Piz Beverin. You had also just noticed some acres of this dark débris outspread on the broad, and now dry, sides of the channel below the Rhine bridge. The Nolla, then, you will remember as a kind of natural ink factory; and may think, too, that it has been pouring forth its torrent of ink from a date long anterior to the Chinese or Egyptian manufacture of the pigment.

Thusis commences a few steps beyond the bridge of the Nolla. The first house on the right side of the long street of which it is composed is the chief hotel of the place. We walked up to the door, and stood on the step. A four-horse carriage was about to start for the Splügen, and the landlord was impressively reiterating his adieux, and his wishes for a pleasant journey, to its occupants. For two or three minutes I waited, but as he did not think it worth his while to salute with a word the coming guest, or to beg to be excused for a moment, that he might pile up still higher his good wishes for his departing guests, I asked the circumnavigator to resume his burden, and went on to the hotel de la Poste, at the further end of the opposite side of the long street. Mine host that might have been now saw that, though it was well done to speed the guest parting with four horses, it was ill done not to welcome also the guest arriving on foot. But in this case the coming guest hardened his heart, and no place was given for repentance. The hotel de la Poste had its advantages. It was not yet 12 o’clock, and as my companion had been limping for the last hour, I saw that I should be obliged to sleep at Thusis; and when you have nothing to do, it is something to have even the arrivals and departures of the diligences to look at. Some of those who come, or who are waiting to go, by them will perhaps have something to say; at all events you see something of what manner of people they are. And then the telegraph bureau is at hand, and you can, which it is always pleasing to do, in a few moments ask your travelling friends what they are about, and tell them where you are. This is very different from, and far better than, writing and receiving letters. It is so near an approach to direct, actual conversation. Letters belong to quite a different category. By the time a letter is received all your plans, or those of your friends, may have been altered. You may be going in an opposite direction to that announced. Your feelings may have become the reverse of those described. Regrets, or rejoicings, may have been called into being on grounds that never came to have any existence. But telegrams, which tell friends where they respectively are, and how they are, at the moment, are present indubitable realities.

Being then obliged to remain at Thusis for the rest of the day, I went in the afternoon to see the old castle of Hohen Rhätien. The ruins of one of these mediæval strongholds cannot, generally, be regarded with much interest, because gratitude is no ingredient in the feelings which the sight of it awakens. The stage of history to which they belong was rather a painful interruption, than a satisfactory continuance, of the progress of human affairs. Its units, represented by these castles, were small fragments of rude force; and these were but ill-compacted into rude wholes, that hardly deserved the name of states. The strong owners of these castles were prompted by a consciousness of their strength to lives of violence and oppression, and the weak were obliged to attach themselves to the strong, only to be oppressed. The physical ruled the moral and intellectual without disguise and without mitigation, except so far as it was counteracted by what soon became the moral and intellectual tyranny of the Church. Of the evils of this system we even suppose that we have not yet reached the end, but that we are still in some degree suffering from them. For reasons of this kind we are indisposed to see in it, what history tells us we ought, the first step in the new order of things to which we belong, and which we may hope has grander possibilities for us than the preceding order of things in the old world had for those of its day; or, indeed, to see in it anything but an assertion of force and injustice, which for a long period altogether forbad, and the consequences of which may be still somewhat hindering, the advance of society in the direction of fair and reasonable institutions. It is with very different feelings that we contemplate the monuments of Greece and Rome, and even of old Egypt; for they do not, as these do, remind us of mere individual brute force. They were works of organized societies, whose wants were of a more human and cultured kind, and whose mistakes and misdeeds, as their consequences are now no longer felt, are almost lost to memory. At all events we owe them much. The very ruins of their buildings remind us of one part of the debt. But we cannot, or will not, feel in this way towards the owners of these old castles. In passing, therefore, the remains of one of them many of us have no wish to inspect it. It is not sacred ground to us. What pleases us most in the matter is the fact, visible in passing it, that it is in ruins.

For such reasons as these, while a little before midday I had looked up at the ruins of the old castle of Hohen Rhätien, I had not thought them worth the hour or so that would have been required for going up to see them; but now in the afternoon, having nothing else to do, I inspected them with some attention. To get to them I had to recross the two bridges. I then, about 200 yards beyond that over the Hinter Rhein, crossed a small mill-race running parallel to the road, and went straight up a steep timber-slide, which is visible from the road. At the head of this you come on the regular horse-track, from Sils to the castle. Three or four hundred yards of this bring you to a steep turfy slope, where you may desert the horse path which winds round the summit to the top, and in five minutes you will be on the top among the ruins. They consist of several detached buildings. The first is a square tower with thick walls. It has no door, or constructed entrance, in the walls that now remain, the only access to the interior being by a hole in one of the angles. We may, therefore, suppose that this was an advanced outwork, that was entered either by a subterranean gallery which connected it with the castle some hundred yards off, or by a ladder which was applied to some aperture in an upper story which has now disappeared from the walls. It may also have been useful as a storehouse for provisions of some kind or other. Next to this is a structure, which evidently was a small church. It is in good preservation. The tower still stands. Alongside of the tower is a chamber with a groined ceiling, which may, possibly, have been the chancel. In line with, so as to be a continuation of, this chamber is the nave of the church. The two windows that alone lighted it are very narrow; but, then, in this part of the world windows are made as small as possible, for to admit a sufficiency of light would, for the greater part of the year, be to admit an intolerable quantity of cold.

Close to the church, in the direction of the castle, is a building about twenty feet square. The walls are about three feet thick. Their stones in some courses are laid horizontally, in others in a slanting, or herringbone, position. Close to this is another building similarly constructed, but more dilapidated. This is not quite so wide as it is long. It has remains of a floor above the ground floor.

Just beyond these two last mentioned buildings is the true castle. It is of very solid construction, but of no great extent. I paced it, but do not remember its exact dimensions. My impression is that it is not so much as a square of forty feet. Neither the door, nor windows, were arched. The latter are in the form of embrasures, much recessed, of course to admit to the interior as much light as possible through such small openings, and to enable its defenders to command as much space as possible outside. The lowest of these embrasures is at a considerable height from the ground. Half the basement is occupied by a spacious excavation in the living rock, which doubtless was the cellar. This is the first necessity in every dwelling place in this part of Switzerland, where the winters are so severe, and some days in summer very hot. If the cellar of a house does not prove good, that is to say, if it should prove incapable of keeping wine, cheese, milk, beer, meat, and in these days potatoes, from the cold of winter and the heat of summer, the house itself is of little value. This large rock-cellar doubtless answered well the purpose for which it was designed. I pictured it to myself stored with hogsheads of wine, barrels of flour, salt beef and bacon, and tiers of cheese, against the annually recurrent siege of winter, or an expected summer siege from the lord of some neighbouring castle. There was plenty of everything, for those were days when rapid digestion waited upon vigorous appetite, and eating and drinking were the great business of life. There were three stories. The large stone fire-place of the first of these remains. Its chimney is carried up, and against, the inner wall, almost as if it had been an after-thought. Does the existence of this chimney throw any light on the date of the structure? We can hardly suppose such a chimney of earlier date than the fourteenth century, but as it appears to have been applied to the wall, and not constructed in it, the wall may be of much greater age than the chimney. There are no traces of chimneys elsewhere in the building. A court-yard surrounded the castle. This included at the angle, between the two precipitous faces of the extremity of the mountain, a space that might have been a garden, or a yard for the live stock in troublous times. It is now laid down in grass for mowing. The castle itself did not stand upon the edge of the precipice. Between it and the precipice, indeed on the very edge of it, are the remains of some small buildings. These, as probably did the three other buildings first mentioned, must have supplied the stabling for horses and cattle, and storehouses for provisions and hay in ordinary times. The church could not have been intended for more than thirty or forty people. This, and the small dimensions of the castle itself, furnish us with some data for forming an estimate of the wealth and power of its original builder, and of his successors. One cannot suppose that his retainers comprised more than about a dozen families. And perhaps the same may be said of the retainers of those who possessed the dozen other castles of the immediate neighbourhood. In descending I took the regular old road down to Sils, for I wished to go the way the old feudal chief and his retainers had used. To one either going to, or coming from Thusis, this way is quite a mile longer than the timber slide.

These may, as we are told they are, be the remains of the oldest castle in Switzerland; but their situation, as well as their character, demonstrate that the explanation given of the name is erroneous. Livy tells us that, at the time of the settlement of the Gauls in northern Italy, the Etruscans they displaced moved off to, and took possession of the district of which the Grisons of our day form a part. In classical times it was called Rhætia, to explain which name, a leader of the emigration of the name of Rhætus was invented. This tradition is supposed to be supported by the assumptions that the name of Thusis is derived from Tuscia, and that the name by which this old castle is now known has come down from the times of Rhætus, its presumed original founder. The tradition, however, affirms an improbability. No invaders, settling themselves among a dispossessed and hostile population, would have constructed so small a fortress, which could have given shelter to only a very small garrison. Nor would they have placed it in such a situation: for there being then no road below Thusis, it would have been at the bottom of a cul de sac, and any one who could have held and devastated the valley, would have starved out the little garrison of the castle. We may, therefore, pretty safely conclude that it belongs to the same date as the church, that is to say, to the times, when feudal lords, who under the conditions of the period implied castles, were a necessity. The great number there was of them at that time in the valley was a kind of common insurance to each against some of the risks to which they would otherwise have been exposed.

We read a good deal in Swiss histories of the way in which in many places the peasants rose against their feudal lords, expelled or killed them, and dismantled or burnt their castles. At all events there was once an abundance of these lords, and we cannot suppose that they voluntarily abandoned their strongholds, and their lands. We see the ruins of a great many of these strongholds, and we see the peasants now in possession of the lands which once supported these strongholds. This, if like things are to be called by like names, is neither more nor less than what French, German, Italian, and Spanish Internationalists are aiming at. Here, in these valleys, as far as the land is concerned, their scheme has for many generations been thoroughly carried out. Lands which feudal lords once held peasants now hold. The substitution of one proprietary for the other was in many cases brought about by the direct use of physical force, in others by the peaceable, it might have been, expression of the will of the community, backed, however, by physical force: which comes to precisely the same thing. And now this peasant proprietorship has had several centuries to develop its nature completely, without any retarding, or disturbing causes operating against it. Whatever merits, therefore, and whatever demerits the system may have, may be seen here, for no one would assert that it can be without either the one, or the other. Some estimate of each I endeavoured to make in my first ‘Month in Switzerland’ of two years back; and in my second ‘Month’ of last year, I endeavoured to direct attention to the history, and to the present action, in this age of capital, of the Allmends, or commonable lands of Switzerland, which in the days anterior to accumulations of capital were, in Switzerland at all events, a necessary appendage to peasant proprietorship. All that I now wish to remark is that that portion of the land which is held as private property, has for a long time been divided into such small holdings, and from absence of settlements, trusts, and charges, has been so completely at the disposal of existing proprietors, as would probably satisfy the most extreme Internationalist, who was in favour of permitting any private rights at all in the land.

In human affairs, however, nothing continues long in one stay; and their progress has at length given rise in these valleys to a new and enlarged development of one of the instruments of production, which formerly existed in them only in the germ, but is now seen to have greater capabilities than have hitherto been found in the land itself: at all events it is one to which the uses of, and the property in, land must now accommodate themselves. This disturbing element, this instrument of production, the powers of which have of late been so much enlarged, is capital in money. And neither the Internationalist, nor anybody else who interests himself about the mixed questions of economics and politics, can arrive at any safe or workable conclusions, unless he so far understands its uses, action, and power, as to see that without it society would collapse, and revert to barbarism. We may, perhaps, get a little glimpse into the question of what are its uses, action, and power, if we divide the inhabitants of these thriving valleys into those who are supported by capital in money, and those who are supported by capital in land, and then endeavour to see how each class is living. I propose the division in the above form, because I suppose that ultimately, and in the nature of things, there is no scientific ground for the assumption, implied in popular usage, of there being a fundamental difference, when they are regarded as means of production, between land and money, or even between either of these two and labour. They are all I imagine, in a broad and true generalization, capital. They seem to be all means of production, and so only different forms of capital. Still the division proposed is one with which we are familiar, and which is intelligible, at least to the eye. To proceed, then, with it: it is clear that a man, and one, too, who was the son of a peasant, can now live here, and live better, than any of the peasant proprietors have for generations lived, without owning, or occupying, a klafter of land. Many are doing this. Every year a greater number do it. What is required for doing it is thought, knowledge, the power of seeing far, and of combining divers facts and considerations, energy, perseverance, and character. It is to be done not so much by the hands as by the brain. That is the chief human instrument to be used. The field to be cultivated is not a little piece of land for supplying directly a man’s own wants, but his efforts must aim primarily at the supply of the wants of others, in a sense of the world. This, however, is only possible through the existence and the use of capital in money. For this purpose money has two distinct functions. First it is the common measure not only of all the useful and exchangeable productions of the world and of man, but also of all that contributes to their production, whether the human means as labour, skill, and knowledge, or the material means as the land and the requisite tools, implements, and machinery: in short, it renders both the human and the material means of production, and the commodities produced, all commensurable. In the second place it enables us, practically, to store up surplus produce of any kind in such a form as to be reconvertible at will into produce of any kind, or into the means of production. In these ways it correlates all the wants and all the capabilities of the whole family of man, dispersed over the world, putting each country into reciprocal relations with all the others. It enables each to produce whatever it may have any natural capacity for producing, and to exchange it for whatever it may want. And this it does not only between different nations, but also between the different individuals of the same nation, and of the same neighbourhood. This is a field, the cultivation of some part of which generally yields to its cultivator a far greater return than can by any amount of individual labour be extracted from two or three acres with some appurtenant rights of fuel and pasturage. And now if we turn to those who are living on the hard-won produce of their few acres, we see that their lives, too, have been greatly elevated and embellished by the existence and applications of capital in money. It might be shown that to it they were indebted for their education, and for the opportunities they have had for starting their children in the world. It has given them the means of travelling very cheaply at the rate of twenty miles an hour; it has given them the means of communicating with the world by the post and by the telegraph; it has brought to their door opportunities for earning something from the travellers that visit their neighbourhood; to it they owe their newspaper; it, too, has enabled them to procure coffee, sugar, wine, cheap clothing, and many other minor advantages. Annihilate capital, and every man throughout these valleys, and throughout the world, is debarred from access to the products of the world, and reduced to the miserable life that is limited to what he can produce with his own hands. Increase capital, which means ultimately, and in its largest sense, the store of useful commodities the whole world may be made to yield, and the human and material means requisite for production, and for distribution, and then there is opened to every man the possibility of entering by his own labour, or skill, or knowledge, up to the amount of their productiveness, into the possession of everything he needs, that any part of the world is capable of supplying. The way to enter on their possession is at all events opened to him, and the command over them to which he may attain will depend mainly upon himself, that is to say, upon the way in which he was brought up, and what he was taught. Whether he is ever to rise to the possession and management of any portion of the money capital of the world will depend almost entirely on how he was brought up, and what he was taught. When all this shall be seen more distinctly than it now is by some of us, the Internationalist, who is himself a creation of money capital, will not perhaps have so much to say as he has at present about the tyranny of capital.

But to go back to our Swiss valleys. It is clear that there has issued from the peasantry, who till recently were their only inhabitants, a class of men who are living a higher life than the peasants, that is than the landed proprietors. It is the life of those who accumulate capital in money, and who live upon the employment of it. And this capital in money is, under the circumstances of the country, within the reach of every one to far higher amounts in value than is the land, the old form of capital. What is needed for its acquisition is cultivated intelligence, and certain moral qualities. This is precisely the point to which the attention and the efforts of the Internationalists should be directed. If society takes care, and it is endeavouring to do this in Switzerland, to give to all its members as fair a chance as is possible under existing circumstances to attain to this culture of the intelligence, and to these moral qualities, the majority will more or less avail themselves of the opportunities offered to them; and so, having numbers, wealth, intelligence, justice, and moral character on their side, will be too strong to be disturbed by the residuum. The son of an Upper Engadin peasant, who had gone out into the world like most of his countrymen, there learnt German and French, and made some money, and now, having returned home with what he had made, was turning it to good account, remarked to me, ‘Our education is improving, but already we have enough of it to enable those, who are disposed to avail themselves of it, to get on in the world. The rest are brutish, and must live by brute work.’ For a moment I was shocked at the hardness of the statement: but I made no reply, for I saw that it was no more than the action of the inexorable law of natural selection applied to moral and intellectual life. It would not be a law were it not inexorable. The analogy, too, of nature requires that it should be applied to man as well as to the lower animals and to plants; and, indeed, if exemptions from it were admissible in any part of the general scheme, they would be admissible least of all in the case of man, for it is of more importance to guard against deterioration that which is highest and best, if we may so speak of any part of the general scheme, than that which is of inferior value—at all events than that which to us appears to occupy a lower place in the scale of being.