which I have already referred, and "the smug and silvery Trent," as the world-wide poet (Shakspeare) calls it, no longer divides hostile and jealous regions. We may, it is true, some of us have our favourite boasts of what is to be found among ourselves. The Lincolnshire and Yorkshire wolds may contend with each other as to which are the best cultivated, without any great danger of being surpassed by any other portion of the kingdom. Young Grimsby may flatter itself that it may one day beat old Hull, and the palm of beauty may reasonably be contended for between the imposing masses of York Minster and the aspiring pinnacles of Lincoln Cathedral. But, as I have already hinted, the object which brings us together to-night is not a local one; it is scarcely a national one; it is a cosmopolitan one; for it aims at the progress of mankind and the advance of our species. Therefore, addressing you Midlanders, I say you are quite welcome to beat us of Yorkshire, if you can. If you fall short of us, we shall be willing to teach; and if you excel us, we shall be, I trust, docile to learn. There is no place from which one ought not to be content to pick up what is laudable and good. Why, when we look at the aspect of the midnight heavens, we are not so much struck with them when it is only a single star that twinkles athwart the gloom, but we most feel the beauty and the brightness, when all their boundless spaces are crowded with light, and when the stars, which may singly exceed each other in glory, collectively serve to show and set forth each other.

And this, I feel that I do not vainly flatter myself, will be the spirit of mankind at large when the civilisation of our race has attained its full developement. It may not be the era of a city like Athens, which absorbed into a single community an amount of poetry, of eloquence, of philosophy, and of art, unparalleled before or since; it may not be the era of an empire like Rome, which rolled up into itself all the eminence of the world; it may not be an era merely of splendid patronage or of surpassing discovery. No Shakspeare then may string the lyre, no Newton may measure the heavens; but it will be rather an era, when judicious enlightenment will pervade almost every community, and when liberal and refined accomplishments will distinguish almost every family. What I want you to feel, what I want you all, if any of you here have not joined it, to join such an institution as this for, is to make you feel how much each of you singly may do to aid this great consummation.

I know that the enemies of Mechanics' Institutes, and of popular institutions generally, have been apt to say that they have a tendency to make the mechanics and working men, whom especially they are intended to benefit, puffed up, presumptuous, conceited, and discontented. All I can say is, that if they do so, they fail singularly in their purpose, and fall far short of their aim. It appears to me that there are two principles upon which we must mainly rely for success in any attempts to raise and regenerate mankind. The one is to have a very high opinion of what we can do, the height to which we can soar, the advance in knowledge and in virtue which we may make,—that is, ambition as concerns our capacities. The other is to have a mean opinion of what we at any time know, or at any time have already done, that is, humility as concerns our attainments. The ambition should be ever stirring us up to the even and steady development of righteous principles, and, where the opportunity presents itself, to the performance of noble, meritorious, and unselfish actions. The humility should ever keep in view that there is no sphere of life, however humble, no round of duties, however unexciting, which any of you may not enrich and elevate with qualities beside which the successes of statesmen and the triumphs of conquerors are but poor and vulgar. I believe there is no eminence to which man may not reach, but he must reach it by subordinating all unlawful impulses, and by subduing all mean ambitions. There is a general craving in the human mind for greatness and distinction. That greatness and distinction, I am thankful to think, is within the reach of any one to obtain; but the greatness and distinction must not be without you, but within you.

I should be sorry to appear to take this opportunity of preaching what might be called a sermon, but I feel so fervid an interest in the welfare and progress of the great body of my countrymen, that I cannot refrain from enjoining them, even while I would invite them to a full enjoyment of all the rich resources and all the innocent pleasures of this our variegated world, never to lose hold of religion. I do not mean that you should necessarily confine it within those stiff and narrow grooves in which some would imprison its ethereal spirit; but I feel assured that it is the source among mankind of all that is large and all that is lovely, and that without it all would be dark and joyless. Under her sacred wing you may securely resign yourselves to all

that is improving in knowledge, or instructing in science, or captivating in art, or beautiful in nature. The Architect of the Universe, the Author of Being, such as Christianity represents Him, cannot but approve of every creature that He has made developing to the utmost extent the faculties He has given him, and examining, in all its depth and mystery, every work of His hand. Shut up the page of knowledge and the sources of enjoyment from the multitude, because some have occasionally abused the blessed privilege! Why, the very same argument would consign every man and woman to a cloister, because the world and active life are full of traps and pitfalls. No. Pre-eminent and supreme as I am convinced religion is, yet to make her so in the convictions and hearts of men, I feel she must discard all timidity, must front every truth in the full blaze of light, and sympathise with every pursuit and every impulse of our race.

I have thus briefly shadowed forth the reasons why no person ought to frown upon Mechanics' Institutions. I do not wish to attribute to them any exaggerated or imaginary value; I do not hold them forth as singly containing the elements with which we should hope to regenerate modern society; but it is because I believe them calculated happily to chime in with the existing wants and prevailing dispositions of the times, to afford opportunities for improvement and development in quarters where they would not otherwise be found, to promote innocent recreation and blameless amusements, and generally to assist the progress of mankind, that I thus venture to recommend them to your cordial sympathy and your active assistance.

BURNLEY MECHANICS' INSTITUTE.

November, 1851.

LADIES AND GENTLEMEN

I thank you from my heart for the very generous reception which you have given to one who has yet certainly been a stranger to the town of Burnley. But you, sir, have just carried me back into Yorkshire, and it is certainly true that, across the hills which rise just above your town, I have had many opportunities of addressing audiences upon similar occasions in some of those valleys which, like your own, are distinguished alike by the beauties of their natural scenery and by the busy hum of human

industry. And I feel that in coming before a Lancashire audience we are no longer living in the times, so eloquently adverted to by a late speaker, when the names of York and Lancaster signified different factions and parties; but now, on the contrary, we are in a happier era, when either your red rose has paled, or our white rose has blushed, into one common colour, and instead of contending for rival causes or for opposing dynasties, we may now only try to boast among each other which has the most or the best supported and best conducted Mechanics' Institutions. I have had many occasions heretofore, and very recent ones, of remarking upon the singular elasticity of these Mechanics' Institutions, I mean their adaptation to the varied aspects of our society. Scarcely a month ago, I attended at a similar meeting in the city of Lincoln, an old and picturesquely built town, the capital of the most agricultural district in England; the towers of whose majestic cathedral look down from their lofty perch upon a wide expanse of reclaimed fens and level corn fields: and among that agricultural population, under the shade of that old cathedral, a thriving Mechanics' Institution has been established. And now I find myself in Burnley, one of that cluster of busy manufacturing towns and communities, which stud this district of England, like the broad brazen knobs upon some old belt. It may be true that their names are not surrounded with the halo of classical or romantic associations. The names of Bolton, and Blackburn, and Bury, and Bacup, and Burnley, have not the imposing and picturesque sound either of Thebes, or Corinth, or Argos, in ancient Greece; or of Padua, or Mantua, or Verona, in modern Italy. But they have at least this comparative advantage, they are not marching their inhabitants in trained bands to batter down each other's walls and assault each other's citizens; their contention, if contention there is among them, is in the pursuits of a peaceful industry, and if they are at strife with each other, it is upon the equal field of honourable enterprise, where all the laurels which are won serve both to crown themselves and to enrich the whole population. Now in a place and district like this, I consider a Mechanics' Institution to be a most appropriate appendage; and therefore it is with great pleasure that I found myself enabled to take part in the auspicious proceedings of this morning. And when I say it is an appropriate appendage, I feel that I understate the truth; it is a most desirable and almost indispensable one. I have just referred to the nature of the pursuits which are fol

lowed here as being peaceful and useful and honourable, but at the same time we must not forget that primarily and in themselves they are conversant only with what is material and with the ways (to use a homely phrase) of making money; and that they might have a tendency, if unchecked and unbalanced by anything in an opposite direction, to engross and enchain some of the more delicate tastes, or the loftier aspirations of the human mind. Far be it from me, in Lancashire or anywhere else, to speak slightingly of cotton; but you must feel that cotton and calico, though they make admirable stockings and other equally indispensable articles of clothing, yet do not in themselves furnish out the whole man. Now, I have observed that a most accomplished and able person, whom I may call a fellow lecturer of my own, Dr. Lyon Playfair, in an address he recently delivered, gave it as his opinion with respect to the modes of education pursued in this country, that in our schools and colleges enough attention has not been given to scientific instruction and regular industrial training. He complains that too much labour may have been bestowed on classical studies, on dead authors, on by-gone poets, and that the faculties have not been enough exercised on the open page of nature and the living wonders which are around and about and above and beneath us. Now, I think that he is probably in the right in this, but at the same time I am convinced that almost every prevailing direction, both of the individual mind and of society at large, ought occasionally to have administered to it something in the way of reaction and of corrective. It may be very well, in the quiet of academic bowers, that the dim cloisters of Oxford and the still shades of Cambridge, retaining, as I hope they ever will do, their old appropriate sources of learning, not ignoring (to use a modern phrase, which I might probably be told in those classic precincts was a barbarous one) the accustomed voices of their own Muses, should yet reflect more, as I believe they have begun to do, of the aspect of the century and the society in which they are placed. But on the other hand, in a district like this, where the pursuit of wealth is the habitual rule, where the recurring routine of labour is the daily life, where the steam engine and the power loom and mechanism and machinery seem to be the lords of time and space, of the body and of the mind, it is well too, that without neglecting, on the contrary while you are directly encouraging, those subjects of inquiry which are congenial to the place, while you are promoting the study of the law of nature and inquiring into the