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4
1912
in his birthplace is not lost even when he migrates to London, where he
becomes a cypher among its teeming millions. His birthplace is for him something
to be proud of: it is part of his nature, and he can no more forget it
than he can the parents who begot him. Pity it is that the same cannot be
said of Islingtonians and other people dwelling in the various boroughs which
constitute our great metropolis. Were it otherwise, more interest would be
taken in their municipal and parochial affairs, and more of their citizens would
show that interest by coming forward to participate in the management of
those local institutions which are rightly deemed of such great importance
in provincial towns, and to establish literary and other kindred associations
which are of such advantage in arousing those intellectual and scientific
activities which do so much good in other places. " Let us not forget,"
as one of the greatest of the ancient Roman sages* wrote centuries ago,
" that there is such a thing as a fellowship or society between all men
in general; the bond or cement that holds them together is reason and
discourse, which by teaching, learning, communicating one with another,
easily make men agree together, and unite them all in one natural sort
of conjunction and community." Such institutions, therefore, do untold
good. They educate the young in literature, in science, and in art; they
teach them to think, and to express their thoughts in words; while above all
they cause them to search authoritative sources for the knowledge which they
themselves would impart to other persons, so that when in the course of time
any one of them enters on public life, he shall be able to comply with the
dictum of the same sage, " that a man who has taken on him a public
trust should not only look that the business be honest, but that he himself be
qualified for the management of it."
In Islington, however, these institutions are only noticeable by their
absence: and yet Islington is the seventh greatest aggregation of human beings
in England and Wales, the eighth in Great Britain, and the ninth in Great
Britain and Ireland. The Medical Officer of Health, as he writes, has in his
mind one city in this kingdom in which a literary and scientific society has
held its meetings regularly week by week for seven months in the year for
fully one hundred and fifty years; and there will be found a most highly
educated middle class, and as a consequence a school of art and a school of
music, as well as other institutions intended for the advancement of its
citizens.
* Cicero. De Officiis Book 1, XVI.