shawl, and muslin trade upon the French. I think this ought not to be. I think it does not arise from any want of native talent; I think it arises simply from the fact that we have not had institutions in this country for the cultivation of the native talent that exists, and that the drawing class which it is one of the objects of the Department of Science and Art to found ought to be connected with every one of these mechanics' institutions. Hon. W. J. Fox, who has signalized his connection with the House of Commons, by an earnest and efficient advocacy of a system of National Education-took part in these exercises.

The Lyceum is not a Charity.—I heartily congratulate the president, and managers, and members of the Oldham Lyceum, and, I may add, the inhabitants in general, who I hope will, to a large extent, be partakers of its benefits. And I will say of the institution, that although a noble liberality and a wise generosity have aided in the erection of the beautiful building which we saw this morning, although rank and station have lent their countenance, and not only lent their countenance, but given most admirable counsel in connection with laying the foundation-stone, and with this celebration of the opening on the present occasion; yet that, notwithstanding this, and duly and gratefully appreciating this, I would say I do not regard-I hope none of you will regard-that institution as a charity. It is not a charity, it is an assistance to the people of this country to pursue the enjoyment of their birthright, of the full development of their faculties, of their training up to all that may become a man, and their reaching all the enjoyments which Providence has placed within the grasp of man. I say in the words of the ring which I wear on my finger, and with which the women of Oldham married me to the cause of education-that "education is the birthright of all." Providence, which brings a living soul into a civilized community, gives that soul, at the hands of the community, a claim for such instruction as may develop its diversified powers, and secure to it a fair prospect of success in the chase of goodness and of happiness. The Lyceum merely gives to the young persons who will avail themselves of its advantages facilities for that purpose. It says,-"You know, you estimate, you claim your birthright. Come here, then, and work it out. Gain the knowledge which you desire, gain the training of your faculties for which you are anxious; if you do so, you must pay the price." I don't mean any money price,—you may have something to do in that way, to a reasonable amount, but I say you must pay the price of toil, and industry, and resolute perseverance, of diligently availing yourselves of all the means within your reach; you must go on, if the time you have be but very limited; you must go on making the most of that time-you must add atom to atom of knowledge, until you pile up a spacious building, and you must thus work your way and show that you are thoroughly aware of the dignity of your own nature, of the capacity of your powers, and of the grandeur of your destiny.

May it stand as a trophy of the victory of knowledge over ignorance, and of goodness, order, and progress over crime and sensuality! May it

stand as a temple, where young and ingenious minds shall inquire after truth, where they shall be animated, not with the love of excelling merely, but with the love of excellence; where they shall be all anxious to go on, still accumulating their stores of knowledge, and still calling their faculties of mind and heart into active exercise! May it be as a fountain from which rich streams of knowledge shall flow over the land, and which, taking various directions from that as from a centre, shall carry manifold fertility with them, and rich harvests of thought, which may be gathered in by the rising and by future generations till they shall rejoice in the fulness of time, bringing their sheaves with them! May it be a shrine where, from time to time, one and another shall arise to much more than local eminence-shall win a name that nations shall pronounce with reverence, and take his place among the laurelled; and may it be a monument of progress of that bright law of progress which has been so repeatedly and so well adverted to this evening-that law of progress which is the great blessing of God upon humanity!

The meeting concluded with addresses from various other speakers.

The building, whose inauguration was thus marked, contains a newsroom, lecture-hall, class-rooms, library, &c., and was erected at a cost of £5000. To institute the Prize scheme, suggested by one of the speakers, the President, Mr. Platt, said "he should have great pleasure in contributing a silver medal annually, and a sum of five guineas to the best mathematician."

THE SALFORD FREE MUSEUM AND LIBRARY, established in 1850, and maintained by a property tax on the Borough of Salford, has an aggregate of 18,555 volumes, of which 12,603 are in the reference department, and 5,952 in the lending department, both of which are free to all residents of the Borough. About 400 readers frequent the reading-room daily, and about 2000 people visit the museum, which is filled with objects of art. The Executive Committee, in their report for 1856, remark: "The issue of books in the year amounts to 142,484 volumes-and each book in the library has in effect been taken out or referred to seven or eight times,— 58,634 volumes have been taken to the dwellings of the readers-threefifths of whom are under 39 years of age, one-fifth are females, and ninetenths are working people—and that the demand for works of science, and history, and biography has been constantly on the increase." An additional wing to the building is to be erected at a cost of £2500.

THE MECHANICS' INSTITUTE AT MANCHESTER was the first institution of its kind which erected a building for the accommodation of its classes, and has recently inaugurated a new edifice, erected at an expense of £10,000, by an Art and Industrial Exhibition-the fifth of the kind held by this bodythe first having been held twenty years ago, and was the first of the kind held in England.

THE LEWES MECHANICS' INSTITUTION.-The opening lecture was given by Rev. Dr. Booth, of Wandsworth, and is published in the Journal of the Society of Arts, for Sept. 26. We give his strong practical common sense on two important points.

Progress in Learning does not depend on Teachers, Books, or Apparatus.--I wish to place before you a great truth, which somehow seems to have been overlooked in our educational discussions. It is this, that learning must come from within, not from without-that listening to a lecture is not learningthat looking at a man making experiments does not teach you to manipulate in science. Only think of a man learning to make shoes, or to sing, or to play on a musical instrument, by attending lectures on shoemaking or music. Believe me, as there is no royal road to literature, there is no railroad to the temple of science; "coaching" may take a man part of the way, but it invariably leaves him worse prepared to encounter the difficulties of the rest of the ascent. He who wishes to mount must gird up the loins of his mind. Lecturers and teachers are all very well to keep idle boys to their work and to stimulate the indolent. They are also useful, like finger-posts, to point out the road you should follow, but they will take you very little of it. A man can no more learn by the sweat of another man's brains than he can take exercise by getting another man to walk for him. All mental improvement resolves itself ultimately into selfimprovement. The food of the mind is like the food of the body-it must be assimilated before it can benefit the system. I do not say that it is within the compass of every man's understanding to become a profound mathematician; men's minds are not constituted all alike; their understandings are as various as their faces; but such a one may become an accomplished linguist, or an expert chemist, or a keen observer of the manifold operations of nature. The Almighty has supplied us with subjects of thought as diverse as the phases of the understanding. But, you will say, though books are cheap, and may easily be procured, we have no apparatus, and apparatus are scarce and dear, beyond the means of the poor man to obtain. Now, here is another error. There is a great deal too much talk about apparatus for teaching science, and the necessity there is that the State should manufacture it and supply it at a cheap rate to schools and to Institutions like this. A man who is eager to learn-who is determined to know his subject-may, if he be at all handy, or with the assistance of the village carpenter or blacksmith, extemporize his apparatus. Polished mahogany, and expensive brass-work and complicated adjustments, are not at all essential. It is told of the celebrated philosopher, Dr. Wollaston, the inventor of the method of rendering platinum malleable, that when a continental chemist of some celebrity called on him, and expressed a wish to be shown over the laboratories in which science had been enriched by so many important discoveries, the Doctor took him into a little study, and, pointing to an old tea-tray on the table, with a few watch glasses, test papers, a small balance, and a blow-pipe on it, said, "There is all the laboratory that I have." Believe me, whatever science you take up to learn, costly apparatus are not necessary-they are only the charlatanism of

science. Now, do not mistake me; I am speaking about learning the elements of science, not of making discoveries in it. To make discoveries in astronomy, a telescope like that of Lord Rosse would be required. To carry on investigations in botany and other departments of natural history, very complicated, highly finished and very costly microscopes are a necessity, while a microscope amply sufficient for educational purposes may be bought for ten shillings. Again, the poor hard-working young man may say, "How can I compete successfully with a man of ample means and plenty of leisure time at his disposal, who has so many favorable opportunities for improving himself--so many aids and appliances in the shape of expensive books and costly apparatus, and experienced tutors provided him?" Now, this is an error. The ways of Providence are not so unequal, after all. The young oak that is nurtured in the hot-house will never become the monarch of the woods on the exposed hill-side. They are parasitical plants that stunt and choke the tree they seemed to shelter. The minds of men so brought up are too often without spring; they are deficient in elasticity of intellect, and they often want that one moral quality of mind which breathes life and vigor into all the intellectual faculties, the absence of which no others can compensate, even by their presence in excess, I mean that unflinching determination not to be borne down by difficulties-that enduring perseverance not to be over-mastered by defeat. He among you who can put forth into action such energy of will does not much require external aid. He need not care whether the schoolmaster be abroad or not, for he has got him at home. This is no mere theoretical reasoning. The views I place before you are amply confirmed by experience. Columbus was not the last by many who showed how the impossible may be reduced to the practical. It was the indomitable resolution of Columbus, his unyielding energy, that enabled him to verify his conceptions, and to realize his theory. Look at the perseverance of Kepler, who for years and years groped his way through dry, perplexed, and endless arithmetical calculations till he saw that first faint ray of light, which burst out as the sun in the mind of Newton, and revealed those laws concealed since the creation, by which the Almighty constituted the mechanism of the universe. Turn where you will, you find indomitable perseverance the indispensable condition of success. Who is there so cold as to read without emotion the heroic struggles of that brave old Huguenot, Bernard Palissy, the potter, who, despite of failure after failure, the ridicule of enemies, the sneers of friends, the remonstrances of his family, still held on, till a success unhoped for at last crowned his efforts. Or, if we wish to take a more fortunate example in our own country, we may name Sir Richard Arkwright, the great inventor of the cotton-spinning machine, who, till he was thirty years of age, continued to practise as a barber in his native town. The characteristic quality of his mind was not deep thinking, but unyielding tenacity of purpose. If any one who hears me is disheartened by his daily toil, or discouraged by the want of books, let him read the autobiography of the late William Gifford, for many years the learned and talented editor of the Quarterly Review. Of his early life he thus writes, "I possessed

at this time but one book in the world, it was a treatise on algebra, given to me by a young woman who found it in a lodging-house. I considered it as a treasure. I sat up for the greatest part of several nights successively; this carried me some way into the science; I had not a farthing on earth, nor a friend to give me one. Pen, ink, and paper were, therefore, for the most part, as completely out of my reach as a crown and sceptre. There was, indeed, a resource. I beat out pieces of leather as smooth as possible, and wrought my problems on them with an old blunted awl." Now, here was a man, almost without instruction or apparatus of any kind, who contrived to master the elements of a sound education, which eventually led him to power, eminence, and wealth. Chance has very little to do with the extension of knowledge. Thousands had seen apples fall to the ground before the time of Newton. But it was to his mind only that the simple fact was suggestive. It fell upon a mind prepared for its reception. Everybody knew that oxygen is a supporter of combustion, that it is largely present in the atmosphere, but it was only the other day that the simple obvious facts were applied to compel the air we breathe to supply fuel to our iron furnaces, a process which bids fair to revolutionize the whole iron manufacture. Great discoveries are everywhere cropping out beneath our feet, if we would only look before us. See what vast discoveries in chemistry and natural science were due to Sir Humphry Davy, and I mention him the more willingly, as he is another and a signal example of a man who, born in a humble station, by the brilliancy of his talents, his unrelaxing perseverance and intensity of will, raised himself to high social position, and took his place as the very first of European philosophers. When a surgeon's errand-boy in Penzance, he attempted to make experiments on the properties of air; and what, you will be curious to know, was his laboratory? Why, the vials and bottles of his master's shop. His biographer, with great justice, observes, had Sir Humphry Davy been furnished, in the commencement of his career, with all those appliances he enjoyed at a more recent period, it is very probable that he might never have acquired that wonderful tact of manipulation, that ability of suggesting experiments, and of contriving apparatus so as to meet and surmount the difficulties which must constantly arise during the progress of the philosopher through the unbeaten tracks and unexplored regions of science. The self-taught mechanician and astronomer, Ferguson, when watching his master's sheep by night, used to lie on his back, and note the relative distances of the stars by means of beads strung upon a string. The profound mathematician, Pascal, drew his geometrical diagrams with a bit of coal. Surely, if it be true that Nature, or rather Nature's God, never acts in vain, it must have been designed that the rare gifts with which Providence has endowed some individual men, taken here and there out of the great mass of mankind, without any reference whatever to rank or station-the peasant boy is as richly endowed as the peer's son-surely, I say, it must have been intended that those priceless, because unpurchasable, gifts should be cultivated, and developed for the general benefit of all. Hence it is that, by a figure of speech, the word which in a certain connection is familiar to all of you, signi-,