MORE WORLDS THAN ONE.

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume XIIL, Issue 198, 19 September 1878, Page 4

MORE WORLDS THAN ONE.

[" SPECTATOR."] Wa wonder how rcany people there are in the United Kingdom viba really eara about the Derby. Sporting men will Bnswer, we Euppose. that everybody cares, that it is "a national holiday ;" and no doubt they have something to say for themselves. The newspapers all report the Derby as if it were an event requiring description, as well ns record, the Clubs all talk of the Derby as if it excited them, and the House of Commons does its very best to give the race a general importance. Nothing prevc-nts any member who wants to aee the race from atteuiiing it, and there is no reason whatever for stopping business on account of it, but the House is never content without a solemn voto th»t it will take a holiday on the Derby Day. Exiling that vote sufficient honor would not be done to the horse. This year, accordingly, there was the usual "scene." Sir Stafford Northcole, after his manner, shilly-shallied aud played prude, and refused to put the motion for adjournment, though he declared his intention of supporting it if put by a private member. Mr Chaplin, who haa a faith in horse?, creditable at least to his perseverance, therefore put it, and was supported, by Mr Power, the member for Waterford, in one of the usual balfhumoroue, half-silly speeches about the " manliness " of the sport in which the sportsmen are mere spectators of a contest between animals too young for any useful work, and the vote was carried by a majority of more than two to one, in a House of 320. Surely that proves that everybody is interested in the Derby, even though the interest in some CBses is only the interest of repugnance. We doubt it nevertheless. Nothing is more difficult than to convince men that what interests them does not interest others, yet nothing is more certain than that the each « c world " iD society is surrounded by other worlds ae little interested in it as terestrials are in the affairs of Jovians or Saturnians. It would be safe, we believe, to assert that one-half the population of the kingdom did not on Wednesday kuow that the Derby Day had arrived, and that a large section of the remainder gathered theirknowledge from the debate in the House of Commons. There is no ignorance more absolute than the ignorance of noneporting men about sporting events, except it be the ignorance of sporting men about everything except their own pursuits. The non-sporting men cannot understand why newspapers devote bo much space to Bporting aifairß, avoid the columns devoted to the subject bb carefully as politicans avoid advertisements, and never make an effort even to master the queer terminology, half-alang, half-science, in which sporting writers try to convey their opinions. The Australian cricketers, we hava no doubt, consider their party the cynosure of all eyes, and no doubt they have succeeded in interesting a good many people who never handled a bat. They have raised the feeling new levies excite when they beat trained troops. There is something amusing in seeing a knot of players from the Antipodes , beat the best English eleven on their own ground at their own game, and something of almost malicious pleasure in the emprise created by the feats of Mr Spofiortb, the Australian bowler. The way he knocks down wickets defended by professional batsmen charms men who thinks cricket should never have been made a profession, and attracts even those who hold that the utility of all gomes is destroyed when they are played cot for enjoyment, but success; when they are described in newspapers, snd when a young man who succeeds at them thinks something of himself. But an inGnite majority of Englishmen have never heard of Mr Spoffjrtb, do not know the laws of . cricket, and would not care to be surprised if it were superseded by lawn tennis. They have seen the game at school, but tbat is all, and they no more comprehend why 17,000 persona should go on a rainy day to Kennington Oval to aee balls knocked about than they comprehend why an Italian should stake hiß dinner on bis chance of guessing bow many fingers his adversary will push out. They simply cannot get through the newspaper reports. As to boating, not one Englishman in ten outside London and the Universities ever reads an account of a boat race, or conld name any one of the champions who tbiok themselves such centres of admiration; while we doubt if any swimmer except Captain Webb is known generally by name at all. He did something which seemed miraculous, and so interested everybody, but hia rivals are, oulside a mere circle, unknown men. There is a small world of persons of all grades, positions and characters, which knows everything about the opera and the theatre, can tell you " who is coming this year," or discuss the performers in almost any play, and is "posted" in operas and dramas aa competitors for the Civil Service are in the dates of battles, but the majority know only that if they look in the Times they will see what is going on y and are impatient to the last degree of the talk to which the fanatics of the theatre are addicted, and which is, we are bound to add, one degree worse than the chat of sporting men or the gossip of Anglo-Indians. The theatre world is a world by itself with its own talk, and its own language, and its own newspapers, and as little en rapport fvitti tie world outside as Mercury with

the Eartb. They are parts of the same fraction of tbe universe, but tbat is all. We have seen sensible men puzzled to annoyance by paragraphs in the Theatre which to others seem moet amusing, and never remember to have seen tbe Era except in theatrical hands. Music, of course is a still more separate world, because music is a science which it requires Istudy even for the gifted to acquire, and which the non-gifted cannot learn; but tbe great musicians, we suspect wouid stare if they knew how large a proportion of cultivated mankind had never heard their names. The omission of the " Court Circular " would, it is said, ruin any newspaper in England; but what proportion of the people kuow wliere the Queen is ? Tbi3 limitation of interest is not, however, confined to amusements. Great as haß been the interest taken of late yeara in theology and ecclesiastical affairs, an immense proportion- of Engliebmen car.* next to nothing about either, or, what is more remarkable still, care only about them within certain narrowly defined limits. No daily journal in England pays more than a passing attention to religious tsffairs, the greatest of daily journals does not even do that, and the majority of secular weeklies are equally unobservant. Even in religious circles there is the most unaccountable apathy. There are said to be 3,000.000 of Wesleyans in the United Kingdom and we doubt if there are a hundred Evangelical clergymen of the Church of England who could say, if questioned, what was done at the last meeting of the Legal Hundred, or what is the name of the ruling minister of the Connection. Our readers are supposed to be interested in such questions, and have probably all heard that there are Baptists, but how many of them can say right away how many Baptists there are, or they would hear without surprise that the sect would not fill Leeds, and is even then tenfold more numerous than the Unitarians? To pass from ao Anglican to a Nonconformist household is to pass into a new world, united by many ties, yet separated by such distances ihit the very "news" of the oue, ,the events its thinks important, are unintelligible to tbo other, while it is meaningless to the outside world; and a strong Nonconformist, or Anglican, or Catholio may live years, and never once see the intelligence which has most interested him mentioned in the newspapers, which yet he considers a microcosm of the world. There are, we believe, extra strata of our society into which any newspaper proprietor who let down a shaft woulJ find, lo his own astonishment, that he had struck "ile," but tb.B instinct of separatenesa is too atrong even for enterprise. Even as regards polities, we doubt if tbe interest is anything like so universal as is believed. There are entire classes which never attend to politics in the slightest degree or for the most transient halfhour; large circles in which no one could, under any temptation, name half the members of the Cabinet, or any of the subordinate Ministers. We are not speaking, be it remembered, of the ignorant, but only of tliß men, in many respects as wise as their neighbors, to whom, from temperament, or occupation, or habit, politics are a sealed book. The best proof that this is the fact is the excessively limited sale of newspapers, as compared with the numbers of those who can read them, and who would pay for them, if they cared enough to consider them a pleasure. A journal with 100,000 subscribers is rich, but there are 600,000 houses in the Metropolitan District alone. L«ok, too, how circulation increases in war time, or when events occur of the kind which interest all human beings capable of taking interest at all. The man, or the event, or the occupation that interests the whole community, or even any large section of it, is exceedingly rare, and each " world" is much more limited than itself deems, or even than outsiders are apt to think. Chess-players all fancy that everybody knows chess, though they know that their servants cannot set a table, and that no chess newspapers ever succeed. As a matter of fact, we believe that even among the cultivated, not one in a thousand knows chess, except as a name.