unhappily proves most attractive,
either strengthens their minds, or improves their happiness. Exciting
novels, such as those of Victor Hugo, Janin, Sue, and others of the class;
highly wrought pictures of the manners and vices of high life; horrible
stories of seduction, murder, and suicide, such as compose so large a part
of the modern romance school of France;--are most sure of circulation
among the working classes of great towns, because they at once interest
and excite the imagination. They are read to the extent, and for the
reason, that novels are so generally devoured by the young, the
imaginative, and the indolent of both sexes in the higher ranks. The poor
operatives, however, have an excuse for the exclusive reading of such
exciting inanities, which does not belong to their higher fellow-citizens;
they are so worn out by long-continued toil, that they are unable to _bear
the fatigue_ of any kind of reading which requires application or
reflection. Some, no doubt, are improved by works of a more elevated
class, which they contrive to purchase out of their savings, and to devour
during the brief period allowed them between labour and repose. But their
number is very small in comparison of the whole, as is decisively proved
by the limited number of booksellers' shops in the manufacturing towns,
compared to those which supply the means of sensual enjoyment. It is
seldom in such cities you will find one bookseller's shop for an hundred
where beer or spirits are retailed. Many even of those who read are rather
injured than improved, both in their habits and their happiness, by the
mental cultivation they receive. They contract exaggerated ideas of the
enjoyment of riches, and the avenues to distinction, which may be opened
by intellectual effort; they become dissatisfied with the station in the
world which Providence has assigned them; they strive to exchange bodily
for intellectual toil; and in the vain attempt to exchange their lot for a
better one, numbers are precipitated into difficulties, crimes, and ruin.

The social organization of trades in all the European cities during the
middle ages, was eminently favourable to the working classes; and it was
perhaps the greatest calamity that ever befell them, that, in the madness
of democratic ambition, they united with the master employers to pull down
these institutions. When each craft was organized in a little republic of
its own, with its office-bearers, stated m