At the breakfast of the British and Foreign School-teachers. on
Wednesday, Mr. Miindella made a very interesting speech, in which he commented upon an assertion made in the desponding article of the Times on Christmas Day, that there is no sub- stantial difference for the better between the ordinary working- man of 1880 and the ordinary working.man of 1830, or even 3780. Mr. Mundella cited the late Mr. Charles Knight's picture of London on the Christmas Day of 1824, with its "rampant,. insolent, outrageous drunkenness," drunkenness such thai "no decent woman could, even in broad daylight, at the holiday season, dare to walk alone in the Strand or Pall Mall, much less in time regions into which flowed all the filth of the adjacent Seven Dials ;" and contrasted that picture with what he had himself observed on the Boxing Day of the present year, when he had carefully watched the crowds of respectable working-men and their families, visiting the National
'Gallery, the South Kensington Museum, and the Tower.; and be declared that there was real and substantial progress, in both the "mental and moral scale." It was in itself an improvement that there are now 4,000,000 children under instruction in England and Wales, with an increase of 200,000 during the last year only. No doubt, that is an improvement, and a very great cue ; only, lot us take care that ten years hence, England is not saying, as the United States appear to be saying just now, that the moral side of the school system has broken down, and that children too often leave school worse than they entered it. Mr. Mundella is just the man to know where the danger lies, and to help us to avoid it.
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