In his Ilawarden speech, Mr. Gladstone, who had been felling
a particularly large tree just before he came down to urge the -miners to take care of their minds, was specially severe on those favourite modes of amusement among labourers which con- sist in "lolling, loitering, whistling, playing marbles," and so forth. He maintained that with the great increase of wages,—an increase which he showed had not been in any way neutralised for the labourer and the miner by any equivalent increase in the cost of living,—there was room for spending a little more on mental culture; and he expressed his opinion that the people of France, Germany, and parts of Italy all surpass the people of England,—though he seemed to have been pursuaded by a book of Mr. Richard's (M.P. for Merthyr), that this is leas true of the Welsh,—in their desire to avail themselves of the means of mental culture. How far Mr. Gladstone succeeded in giving an impulse to mental culture among the people of Hawarden we cannot tell, but he certainly succeeded in making idle and dawdling habits look weak and ridiculous. Whether Mr. Gladstone fells or plants, he always doer it with energy ; but perhaps helellsoven better than he plants.
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