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.
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