A correspondent of the _Gardener's Magazine_ observes that "next to
the existing school societies, there is nothing I am more anxious to
see, or would more gladly contribute to, than a _Society for promoting
the Rational Amusements of the Lower Classes_, the first aim of which
should be to instruct itinerant teachers of music, singing, and
dancing, in improved modes of imparting their arts, and thus fairly
set the plan agoing, when it would soon work its own way, and might
then be extended to higher objects. The taste for flowers among the
Paisley weavers, for gooseberry-growing at Manchester, and for music
among the west of Yorkshire clothiers, originally sprang up from
imitation of one or two amateurs of each pursuit; and there only needs
a similar _first impulse_, which a society with a few thousands a year
might give, to spread a general taste for music, singing, and dancing,
and ultimately for other branches of the fine arts, as drawing and
painting, as well as for natural history, and the cultivation of
flowers and fruits, &c.
"The lower classes in England, thus improved in morals and manners by a
better education and more humanising amusements, might be safely left
to choose their time of contracting marriage, and would then no more
make beasts of themselves by drinking fermented liquors, than do the
lower classes in the city from which I write, (Brussels) where
probably more beer (and that by no means weak) is drank than in any
town of similar size in England, every street being crowded with
_cabarets_ (public-houses,) and these in the evening almost always
filled. But how filled? Not with rioters and noisy drunkards, but with
parties at separate tables, often consisting of a man, his wife and
children, all sipping their pot of beer poured into very small glasses
to prolong the pleasure, and the gratification of drinking seeming
less than that of the cheerful chit-chat, which is the main object of
the whole assemblage. Deep-rooted national bad habits can be
eradicated only by the spread of knowledge, which will ultimately
teach our lower classes, as it has already done the bulk of the
higher, that _moderation_ is the condition of real enjoyments, and
must be the motto even of the sensualist who aims at long-continued
indulgence."
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