Page:Yeast. A Problem - Kingsley (1851).djvu/130

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VOGUE LA GALÈRE.

'Oh, we shall give them the halfpenny ballads in time!' said Vieuxbois, smiling.

'You will do a very good deed, then,' said mine host. 'But I am sorry to say that, as far as I can find from my agents, when the upper classes write cheap publications the lower classes will not read them.'

'Too true,' said Vieuxbois.

'Is not the cause,' asked Lancelot, 'just that the upper classes do write them?'

'The writings of working men certainly,' said Lord Minchampstead, 'have an enormous sale among their own class.'

'Just because they express the feelings of that class, of which I am beginning to fear that we know very little. Look, again, what a noble literature of people's songs and hymns Germany has. Some of Lord Vieuxbois' friends, I know, are busy translating many of them.'

'As many of them, that is to say,' said Vieuxbois, 'as are compatible with a real Church spirit.'

'Be it so; but who wrote them? Not the German aristocracy for the people, but the German people for themselves. There is the secret of their power. Why not educate the people up to such a standard that they should be able to write their own literature?'

'What,' said Mr. Chalklands, of Chalklands, who sat opposite, 'would you have working-men turn ballad writers? There would be an end of work then, I think.'

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