ent
laying his hand, "what is the great want of English society--to mingle
class with class--I would say, in one word, the want is _the want of
sympathy_." A great truth, but not yet appreciated. It is the old truth,
on which Christianity is based, of "Love one another"--simple saying,
but containing within it a gospel sufficient to renovate the world. But
where men are so split and divided into classes, and are so far removed
that they can scarcely be said to know one another, they cannot have a
due social regard and consideration, much less a genuine sympathy and
affection, for each other?

Charity cannot remedy the evil. Giving money, blankets, coals, and
such-like, to the poor--where the spirit of sympathy is wanting,--does
not amount to much. The charity of most of the Lord and Lady Bountifuls
begins with money, and ends there. The fellow-feeling is absent. The
poor are not dealt with as if they belonged to the same common family of
man, or as if the same human heart beat in their breasts.

Masters and servants live in the same unsympathetic state. "Each for
himself" is their motto. "I don't care who sinks, so that I swim." A man
at an inn was roused from his slumber; "There is a fire at the bottom of
the street," said the waiter. "Don't disturb _me_" said the traveller,
"until the next house is burning." An employer said to his hands, "You
try to get all you can out of me; and I try to get all I can out of
you." But this will never do. The man who has any sympathy in him cannot
allow such considerations to overrule his better nature. He must see the
brighter side of humanity ever turned towards him. "Always to think the
worst," said Lord Bolingbroke, "I have ever found the mark of a mean
spirit and a base soul."

On the other hand, the operative class consider their interests to be
quite distinct from those of the master class. They want to get as much
for their labour as possible. They want labour to be dear that they may
secure high wages. Thus, there being no mutual sympathy nor friendly
feeling between the two classes,--but only money
considerations,--collisions are frequent, and strikes occur. Both
classes--backed by their fellows determined to "fight it out," and hence
we have such destructive strikes as those of Preston, Newcastle, London,
and South Wales.

The great end of both is gain, worldly gain, which sometimes involves a
terrible final loss. A general suspicion of each other spreads, and
society