u cy 
 
 t<t* 
 
 Clje Ceadjerg ai % %%t" 
 
 A LECTURE 
 
 DELIVERED IN THE TOWN HALL, BOMBAY, 
 
 AT THE REQUEST OF THE BOMBAY MECHANICS' 
 INSTITUTION, 
 
 t> 
 
 m 
 
 AT THE 
 
 SESSION 1866-67. 
 
 BY 
 
 THE BEY, JOHN PATON, 
 
 JUNIOR CHAPLAIN ST. ANDREW'S CHURCH. 
 
 PRINTED FOR THE INSTITUTION. 
 
 3Samfiag: 
 
 PRINTED AT THE 
 
 EDUCATION SOCIETY'S PRESS, BYCULLA. 
 
 1867. 
 
 Ss>J 
 
"CJjs fetxljcrs of % %Qtf 
 A LECTURE 
 
 DELIVERED IN THE TOWN HALL, BOMBAY, 
 
 AT THE REQUEST OF THE BOMBAY MECHANICS' 
 INSTITUTION, 
 
 AT THE 
 
 SESSION 1866-6^. 
 
 THE REV, 
 
 JUNIOR CHAPLAIN 
 
 JOHN PATON, 
 
 ST. ANDREW'S CHURCH. „--,_, 
 
 * » ~ ** * > 
 
 PRINTED FOR 
 
 THE INSTITUTION. 
 
 i 
 
 Bomfiag: 
 
 PRINTED AT THE 
 
 EDUCATION SOCIETY'S PRESS, BYCULLA. 
 
 1867. 
 

 1-^,5^ 
 
Who loves not Knowledge ? "Who shall rail 
 Against her beauty ? May she mix 
 With men and prosper ! Who shall fix 
 
 Her pillars ? Let her work prevail. 
 
 But ou her forehead sits a fire ; 
 
 She sets her forward countenance, 
 And leaps into the future chance 
 
 Submitting all things to desire. 
 
 Half-grown as yet, a child, and vain, 
 
 She cannot fight the fear of Death. 
 What is she, cut from Love and Faith, 
 But some wild Pallas from the brain 
 
 Of Demons ? fiery hot to burst 
 All barriers in her onward race 
 For power. let her know her place : 
 
 She is the second, not the first. 
 
 A higher hand must make her mild, 
 If all be not in vain, and guide 
 Her footsteps moving side by side 
 
 With Wisdom like the younger child. 
 
 For she is earthly, of the mind, 
 
 But Wisdom heavenly, of the soul. 
 O friend, who earnest to thy goal 
 
 So early, leaving me behind, 
 
 I would the great world grew like thee, 
 
 Who grewest not alone in power 
 
 And knowledge, but from hour to hour 
 
 In reverence and in charity ! 
 
 — Tennyson. 
 
THE TEACHERS OF THE AGE. 
 
 " Disce aut discede." 
 Learn or be off. 
 
 The world is in a sense a great school, wherein men and 
 women teach and learn. This does not seem a very exalted 
 idea of the world we live in, bnt it is one from which a good 
 deal may be learned. We are in school, either as teachers 
 or scholars, or perhaps as an amalgam of both, like that 
 hybrid creation of modern edncational systems the boy or 
 girl monitor. 
 
 Let us think of the Teachers in Schools. What crowds of 
 thoughts in all manner of forms fling themselves on the mind 
 as the words are spoken ! 
 
 Teachers in Schools ! when we think of them cannot some 
 of us recall the forms, the methods, and even the very 
 words and tones of utterance, and expressions of countenance 
 of men we loved and reverenced in the time of boyhood, 
 long ago, men who humbly did their duty through many a 
 weary year, teaching God's own truth to God's own children. 
 Teachers in Schools ! who can tell their very-many-sidedness. 
 Here you have the tiresome pedant, no-teacher called teacher, 
 who addresses his unfortunate should-be scholars as Aristotle 
 might have spoken to a young Renan had both lived in the 
 time of Bacon, who is of roots, fathers, and catacomb litera- 
 ture generally. Then you have the Gradgrind tutor of the 
 very advanced school, dapper, well brushed, with painfully 
 white wristbands, and a very white ferule which comes down, 
 not by any means infrequently, rat-tat-tat on the lids of the 
 little pitchers he is seeking to fill full of facts. Poor little 
 pitchers ! 
 
 Here you have the old crone who presides over the dame- 
 school, who, as she knits her stocking, which seems to be of 
 the everlasting-heel species, with tremulous accents teaches 
 
6 
 
 the young Hodges and Nancies their spelling of words of two 
 syllables through the long summer days. You can hear her 
 through yon latticed window almost covered with honey- 
 suckle :"Ba spells Ba, John Hodge. Yer feyther could 
 spell Ba six months afore he were your age. Hey ho ! I 
 mind o' teaching him his primer, and it's forty year agone 
 sin' then. B a spells Ba, John Hodge/' 
 
 Then you have lihe boarding-school mistress, with her 
 philosophical theory of education, basis of music, Cockney 
 French, Polish Italian, and Hamburg German, who advertises 
 for pupils in the middle class, and undertakes to teach girls 
 all accomplishments, how to get in and out of a carriage, and 
 how to carry their trains at a court presentation.* 
 
 Here you have the splendid rector, with his most advanced 
 and truly scholarly system of humane training, carried out 
 with every appliance, and by men in every way qualified for 
 their high and ennobling work. 
 
 Then you have Misther O'Skelpy, hedge schoolmaster, 
 esquoire, whom you might hear in some fine spring morning 
 addressing a careless pupil thus : — 
 
 11 Now what's the lisson this morning, mi spalpeens ? 
 Is'th the pluparfict of amo ? faith an' I luv the word, an' I 
 du. Give the pluparfict of amo, will ye, that hid boy there ? 
 Och, an' it's you, is'th it, Dinnis, thin till me did ye bring 
 yer pate wid ye this luvly morning of spring ? ye didn't, 
 didn't ye, Dinnis ? Faith, thin, I can't affoord to tache you 
 the pluparfict of amo for nothing. Jist you git along to the 
 bog wid ye, and fitch yer pate, and Dinnis — Dinnis, mind 
 ye fitch one that's a thumper. Manetime, till Dinnis comes 
 back, we'll decline pinna, a pin. I can't affoord to tache sich 
 high Latin as the pluparfict of amo for nothing, mi darlins : 
 
 * The following is a quotation from an advertisement cut from a 
 
 newspaper last August : — Mesdemoiselles B will also be prepared to 
 
 give lessons to ladies in Court Presentations ; it will not be necessary to 
 bring trains, as they will be kept for the purpose." Could burlesque of 
 education be carried further ? 
 
so you always remimber yer pates. The bigger the pates 
 that ye bring the bigger the scholars I'll make uv ye. 
 Eemimber yer pates, an' ye'll niver forgit the declinshun of 
 the pluparfict of a?no. ,} 
 
 Teachers in School ! what a mixed host of names comes 
 up when we think of them — Socrates, Aristotle, and Mr. 
 Squeers ; Doctor Samuel Johnson, Epicurus, and Ichabod 
 Crane of Sleepy Hollow; Milton, Oliver Goldsmith, and 
 Eugene Aram ; Dr. Arnold, Edward Irving, and Dominie 
 Sampson, &c. 
 
 What a mixture of names of teachers ! — good, bad ; 
 devoted, faithful ; real, fictitious; past, present ; living, dead — 
 dead, yet speaking. 
 
 Do not laugh at this strange jumble of names, for just such 
 a mixture as this is found in the great world-school, and 
 we are either teachers or scholars in it — for the most part 
 scholars. 
 
 This definition of ourselves as scholars has a touch of the 
 real fantastic in it, but it has a touch of the pathetic too. 
 
 The world-school has its work and its play, its hard desks 
 that rub elbows out, its copy-books in which men-boys and 
 women-girls write sometimes fine copperplate, sometimes 
 only strokes, and not seldom very crooked pothooks. It 
 has its lessons blundered through, and its tasks mastered 
 and laid away complete, its correct accounts and its blun- 
 dered sums, which, however, will not submit to be blotted 
 out, like a schoolboy's, with a sponge or a jacket-cuff. It 
 has its rivalries, and oh ! they are bitter in their fierce envy, 
 and its fights, too, often gone about con amove, as with the 
 boys on the common. It has its birch, too, for the backs of 
 the naughty, and a fooFs cap to set on the heads of the 
 dunces withal. 
 
 One needs no excuse in introducing a good quotation into 
 an irregular discourse, so we will here read a part of one of 
 Tom Hood's very touching and yet very funny poems about 
 
school. The lines quoted were the sparks that flared up into 
 this lecture ; they are from a little poem called " Lines on a 
 distant prospect of Clapham Academy" : — 
 
 " Lo, there they scvamhle forth, and shout, 
 And leap and, skip and mob about 
 
 At play where we have played ; 
 Some hop, some run (some fall), some twine 
 Their crony arms ; some in the shine 
 
 And some are in the shade. 
 
 Some laugh and sing, some mope and weep, 
 And wish their frugal sires w^uld keep 
 
 Their only sons at home ; 
 Some tease the future tense, and plan 
 The full-grown doings of the man, 
 
 And pant for years to come- 
 
 " A foolish wish ! There's one at hoop ; 
 And four at fives ; and five who stoop 
 
 The marble taw to speed ; 
 And one that curvets in and out, 
 Reining his fellow-cob about : 
 
 Would 1 were on his steed ! 
 
 " Yet he would gladly halt and drop 
 That boyish harness off to swop 
 
 With this world's heavy van, 
 To toil, to tug. O little fool, 
 When thou canst be a horse at school, 
 
 To wish to be a man ! 
 
 Thy taws are brave ! Thy tops are rare ! 
 Our tops are spun with coils of care, 
 
 Our dumps are no delight ! 
 The Elgin marbles are but tame, 
 And 'tis at best a sorry game 
 
 To flv the Muses' kite ! 
 
9 
 
 Our hearts are dough, our heels are lead, 
 Our topmost joys fall dull and dead, 
 
 Like balls with no rebound ! 
 And often with a faded eye 
 We look behind and send a sigh 
 
 Towards that merry ground ! 
 
 Then be contented. Thou hast got 
 The most of heaven in thy young lot, 
 
 There's skyblue in thy cup ! 
 Thou'lt find thy manhood all too fast 
 Soon come, soon gone, and age at last 
 
 A sorry breaking-up !" 
 
 Well, well, Mr. Hood ; but we, having escaped from school, 
 still do find ourselves in school, a very real and very stern 
 school. Boys and girls though we be no longer, we are even 
 yet but learning to be true men and women. 
 
 We wish this evening to speak of some of the teachers in 
 the great world-school, or, as we have called them, " The 
 Teachers of the Age." 
 
 By teachers of the age we do not mean the professors and 
 schoolmasters only. We include them, but we mean a far 
 larger class, to wit, a class including every one who is exer- 
 cising a guiding or misguiding influence on others in this 
 age. There is of a surety, then, no fear that our subject 
 should be exhausted, for if we come to examine particularly 
 into the matter we shall find that there is scarcely a man too 
 ignorant or too insignificant to exert some influence on 
 those about him, for good or ill. We cannot, of course, in 
 one lecture travel over so vast a field as this, which includes 
 all words and all actions, nor would it fulfil our object so to 
 do. We mean only to speak of those teachers who are set- 
 ting, who have set, or who ought to set, their impress on 
 the age, for good or ill, in some specific or remarkable 
 manner. 
 
 Let us look for some of our teachers, then, and mark the 
 effects and peculiarities of their teaching. 
 
 2 T A 
 
10 
 
 Of the Men op the Past as Teacheks of the Age. 
 
 The wisdom of any age should be the sum of the wisdom 
 of all past ages plus the power of the living wise men. The 
 reason why it is never so is that the living wise men never 
 start from the standpoint at which the dead wise left off. It 
 is with painful effort, and an ever-continuing struggle with 
 forgetfulness, that the scholar strives to utilize the wisdom 
 of the past, and learn what the sages of old thought and 
 did. The longer a man lives, and the more he thinks, the 
 more he will lament the waste of the lore of those who are 
 gone from earth. In every department of science and art we 
 find ignorance of the past a cause of much useless theorizing, 
 obstructive experiment, and grievous loss of time and 
 energy, among nations, in commercial circles, in halls of 
 learning, and in the cabinets of statesmen. From ignorance 
 that the noble dead men — whose thoughts and whose hal- 
 lowed dust alone remain to tell us what they were, and how 
 they lived — pursued certain thought-lines and life-tracks 
 which they, hopefully experimenting, proved to lead to that 
 humiliating issue Nothing, how many men have trodden the 
 same fruitless paths ? How often have experiments in gov- 
 ernment been made and remade which a wider and deeper 
 historic knowledge and more teachableness would have 
 shown to be in vain ? How many chimerical inventions in 
 mechanical arts have been made and made again, simply be- 
 cause inventors have not been at the pains to learn what 
 mechanical experimentalists had done before them ? How 
 many times have ideas been broached in the books of the 
 learned, ideas called <c advanced" in the canting jargon of the 
 day, which are mere walking ghosts of ideas which have 
 risen from their graves in Greece, Rome, Alexandria, Port 
 Royal, Tubingen, Gotham, or Holywell Street, ideas which have 
 been slain long long ago in the conflict with eternal truth ! 
 
 "What hosts of idealistic resurrectionists are there, who 
 mistake the mei*e ghost for a living entity! What repeti- 
 tions of errors do we see in consequence ! Emperors and 
 kings and statesmen make mistakes which have been madt--- 
 
11 
 
 before and demonstrated to be fatal, as they might have seen 
 had they known the contents of their countries' archives, or 
 read and remembered the lessons of the books on their 
 shelves ? What grave mistakes, too, do the churchmen make 
 in their ignorance of the past doings of the churches ! How 
 often before has a policy of spurious liberty — libertinism of 
 thought, called liberty of thought — issued in infidelity, 
 merged into anarchy, and resiled by the natural law of reac- ■ 
 tions into mere formalism ! How often before has the policy 
 of attention to the outward as essential to truth in worship 
 developed itself into mere formalism, and become in the end 
 a mere fossil religion, a dead shape, a no-religion in a mask 
 called religion ! How often have communities rushed into 
 public errors which have before shown their power for ill in 
 producing effeminacy, a bastard luxury and ruin, sometimes- 
 in a less and sometimes in a greater degree ! 
 
 As we are prohibited from entering on religion or politics 
 in lectures like this, we shall take a more defined example of 
 what we mean from what may be termed mercantile his- 
 tory. My illustration refers to circumstances which occurred 
 in the year 1720, and to a certain great commercial city of 
 the present day, and it shows the folly, if not the sin, of 
 stopping the ears when our venerable teacher the Past would 
 teach us. 
 
 History tells us that in the year 1720 speculation painted 
 its own portrait, a portrait resembling *a caricature, but 
 which was not one. The picture was painted on the South 
 Sea Bubble. Hogarth's famous etching " The Bubble*' was 
 not more pathetically grotesque than the reality, and Swift's 
 lines on the subject did no more than record an irony whose 
 edge was steeled and made most cruelly cutting by what 
 was, alas ! too real and too severely true. One or two extracts 
 will give an idea of some of the things which took place in 
 1720:—. 
 
 ' ' The English ' South Sea Scheme,' though originating in 
 a purely patriotic motive, developed itself into a swindle 
 
12 
 
 pure and simple. Almost everybody in the country caught 
 this cholera morbus of cupidity. Poets, philosophers, di- 
 vines, fashionable ladies, and hoary-headed aristocratic sen- 
 sualists were infected with the disease. Pope dabbled in 
 S. S. S. (South Sea Stock.) Lady Mary Wortley Montaguo 
 was accused of cheating Ruremonde, the French wit, out 
 of five hundred pounds' worth of stock. Ladies laid aside 
 " ombre" and " bassette" to haunt Change Alley. Gay, 
 the poet, stood to win enormous sums. He at one time 
 imagined himself, as Pope did, to be lord of thousands, and 
 characteristically refused to follow a friend's advice to real- 
 ize at least enough to secure himself a clean shirt and a 
 shoulder of mutton for every day for life. Gay persisted in 
 holding, and lost all. ***** 
 
 " The stock rose to thirteen hundred pounds' premium. 
 * * * The rush to buy in became tremen- 
 
 dous." A vulgar song of the day has it thus : — 
 
 " Then stars and garters did appear 
 
 Among the meaner rabble 
 To buy, to sell, to see and hear 
 
 The Jews and Gentiles squabble- 
 
 "The greatest ladies thither came 
 
 And plied in chariots daily. 
 Or pawned their jewels for a sum 
 
 To venture in the Alley." 
 
 Dean Swift, in his coarse and incisively witty fashion, com- 
 pared ' c Change Alley" to a gulf in the southern seas where 
 multitudes of unfortunates were fishing. He says — 
 
 " Subscribers here by thousands float, 
 And jostle one another down, 
 Each paddling in his leahy boat, 
 And here they fish for gold, and drown. 
 
 " Now buried in the depth below, 
 Now mounting up to heaven again, 
 They reel and stagger to and fro 
 At their wits' end, like drunken men. 
 
13 
 
 "Meantime, secure on Garraway's cliffs, 
 A savage race by shipwreck fed 
 Lie waiting for the foundered skiffs, 
 And strip the bodies of the dead. " 
 
 The early success of the S* S. S. produced a host of imi- 
 tators. " Companies and projects of every description were 
 formed. A thousand bubbles were daily blown into existence. 
 Then was the Periwig Company, the Spanish Jackass Com- 
 pany, a Quicksilver Fixation Company, a Company to make 
 deal boards out of sawdust," &c. &c, and finally " A com- 
 pany for carrying on an undertaking of great importance, 
 but nobody to know what it is." 
 
 The author who records this sarcastically adds — 
 
 " Let not the reader be incredulous. This lastmentioned 
 company, or rather the prospectus of it, was a great fact. 
 
 " The man of genius who essayed this daring inroad upon 
 public gullibility merely stated in his prospectus that the re- 
 quired capital was half a million, in five thousand shares of 
 one hundred pounds each, deposit two pounds per share. 
 Each subscriber paying his deposit would be entitled to one 
 hundred pounds per annum per share. How thi,s enormous 
 profit was to be obtained he did not condescend at the time, 
 nor indeed at any time, to inform them. He, however, 
 promised that in a month full particulars would be announced, 
 and a further call made for the remaining ninety-eight 
 pounds of the subscription. Next morning at nine o'clock, 
 the great man opened an office in Cornhill. Crowds of 
 people beset his door, and when he shut up, at three o'clock, 
 he found that no less than one thousand shares had been sub- 
 scribed for, and the deposits of two pounds per share paid. 
 Thus in five hours he became the winner of two thousand 
 pounds. He was contented with this venture. The same 
 evening he set off for the continent, and was never heard of 
 again." 
 
 Here was the voice of a great practical teacher raised to 
 proclaim to all coming time and to all rash speculators 
 therein, " Beware, ' Ex nihilo nihil fit/ ' He that maketh 
 
14 
 
 haste to be rich shall not be innocent/'' yet the men of the 
 world have shut their ears often since then,, and, unheeding* 
 of this great teacher of the past, have had their railway 
 mania, their Potosi and Cornish mining manias, and their 
 other muffin and crumpet company manias, down to this 
 very day, wherein, in a certain city of the East, say 
 Cottonopolis, wo have had our fine display of speculative 
 fireworks, and its sequence of dark night, smell of powder 
 
 expended, the ends of the rocket sticks, and and — ■ — 
 
 and the bills to pay ! 
 
 By all this roundabout reference to commercial history I 
 mean simply to show that History is a great Teacher of the 
 Present, and that we should listen to its lessons. We are 
 getting so excessively smart in these days that we are above 
 listening to the voices of the past. The past was slow. In 
 the past days they had no railways and telegraphs. There 
 were no Athenaeums , nor strikes, nor preference shares in 
 those days. There was no Mr. Gladstone, nor Mr. John 
 Bright. There were - no penny papers, and, above all, there 
 were no Saturday Reviews. We are the people. Ours is 
 the age of ages. The past, save now and then, was an age 
 of what is technically called old-fogy ism. There were posi- 
 tively boys and girls in those days. The gentlemen actually 
 wore coats and the ladies bonnets. There were in these 
 primeval times old-fashioned virtues called reverence and 
 modesty, and a Quixotic kind of thing called pay-what-you- 
 owe-ism. We are got above all this kind of antiquarianism 
 now. Men-children are born into the world in court 
 dresses and shoe-buckles, able at once to administer laws to 
 whole provinces, or they arrive full-blown financiers with a 
 day-book under one arm, a ledger under the other, and a 
 
 pen behind the right ear. Women-children come well 
 
 never mind them : there are no girls now. 
 
 We are travelling ahead at express rate as a minimum. 
 Now, Progress is good, but it must be sound and sure. 
 It must be based on experience of all the Past. The very 
 use of the past is to teach its lesson as a hoary-headed 
 
15 
 
 preceptor to each succeeding present age. I do not say 
 il imitate the past " — that would be to deny the progress of 
 the ages — I say " learn from the past." Take the good out 
 of it; put the bad out of it. As reasonable men, be taught 
 thereby. When I hear the men who call themselves men 
 of " advanced" ideas speaking of the words and actions of 
 bygone years as folly I always think of a singular scene, 
 which I will here describe. 
 
 A new factory had just been built, and there was a grand 
 demonstration at the opening of it. All the village assem- 
 bled. There was a procession, a brass band, speeches, bad 
 music, and plenty of noise of all kinds in the forenoon, and 
 a dinner, speeches, more bad music, and a greater noise in 
 the afternoon, &c. &c. 
 
 At one end of the new factory, which was some four 
 stories high, stood a long contractor's ladder, reaching up 
 nearly to the topmost row of windows, and alongside of it 
 was a waste-pipe which came down from the leads on the roof. 
 A lot of young men began, one after another, to climb 
 the ladder, and to try to make their way from it to the 
 tonmost windows, to the manifest risk of their lives. After 
 several had failed, a pert young tailor, in a very new 
 suit of clothes, came out, and, laughing at them all as if they 
 were a set of bunglers and cowards, declared that he would 
 not only go up to the windows, but on to the roof itself. 
 
 " Go it, Snip," cried the crowd, and up he went. 
 
 He got to the top of the ladder, and thence on to the 
 waste-pipe, and in a fit of braggadocio kicked away the 
 ladder. 
 
 From the ground it appeared but a step from the ladder- 
 top to the house-top, and the pipe seemed a facile staircase ; 
 but when he got up, and was fairly on the pipe, Master Snip 
 found it a vastly more difficult thing to fulfil his boast than 
 it had been to make it. At last he fairly stuck. You never 
 saw a tailor of the advanced school in sadder plight, hang- 
 ing as he was between heaven and earth, and clinging to his 
 
16 
 
 pipe in mortal terror, with his new suit of nineteenth, 
 century raiment all smeared with bright green paint off the 
 pipe. 
 
 " Come down, lad," cried an old old woman frantic with 
 terror. 
 
 " Can't," cried Snip in woeful tones that fell from the 
 clouds like a prose parody on Mr. Longfellow's " Excelsior/' 
 
 " Go on. Get up, can't ye ? Get to the top, " cried the 
 men. 
 
 " Ca-a-ant !" fell the accents of poor Snip again from the 
 sky. 
 
 " Just see here/' said the contractor's men one to another, 
 as on the alarm's being given they ran round the corner, 
 1 ' here's a meddlesome piece of chap flung our ladder down, 
 and stuck to the wall like a kite nailed on a barn door. Hi ! 
 you up there ! you just wait and hold on tight, till we tie a 
 ten-foot piece on to our long ladder, and we'll be up with 
 you, Mr. Meddlesome." 
 
 It was done, and Snip was set on the house-top a wiser 
 man, if not a better tailor. 
 
 tf Next time you go to climb houses, Mr. Snip," said the 
 oldest mason, " don't you kick away your ladder, mind you 
 that." 
 
 The moral of this is pretty evident. Don't try to get on 
 and up by kicking away your ladder of past experience. 
 You will neither get on nor up if you do, but will stick to 
 the wall, like Mr. Snip the tailor. 
 
 It: is by adding the short ladder of the present to the long 
 ladder of the past that men get to the top. 
 
 Study history. 
 
 Make yours the lessons of the growth of nations, families, 
 men, and men's work. Make yours the great thoughts of all 
 the hoary past. 
 
 Think of the magnificent lessons which may be learned from 
 the histories of the mighty nations of old ! With what 
 
17 
 
 voices speak the stories of the ancient powers,, Assyria, 
 Egypt, Judah, Rome, Greece, or Venice with her sermons in 
 fair stones ! How profitable in their stern, terse vehemence 
 are the lessons read from Northern runes, from rough Danish 
 sea-daring deeds, or from the many-sided, many-coloured 
 stories from the history of our own loved islands of the 
 Northern Sea ! How the tales of warlike and commercial 
 adventure in the western hemisphere stir the hearts of men 
 to this very hour. How touching the record of the deter- 
 mination of the Pilgrim Fathers and their undaunted de- 
 scendants, and how spirit-stirring the histories of the ancient 
 Spanish conquests that come to us in tales of the sword and 
 sail, from far Western islands, from the giant-hill countries of 
 Mexico and Peru, and from that weird g-io-antic delta of the 
 mighty Amazon ! Say, are not the records of the powers 
 and heroisms of ancient days most mighty incentives to stir 
 up the laggards, and rouse men from ease in these our 
 modern days ? The past urges the nations on. 
 
 To take another view of this subject. Has the past no 
 lessons with its learning ? What Anakim sages has this 
 round world seen ? What words of wisdom Avere written 
 long, long ago ? In physical science progress has been so 
 fast of late that none save the sages of very recent days can 
 teach us much, if we except the grand lesson of humility, 
 taught in man's esteemed-wise yet profoundly foolish 
 guesses after truth ; but in mental science it is really a 
 matter of doubt if we have made much progress since the 
 days of Aristotle, or if any of our modern philosophers are 
 a match for old Plato, though so many years have gone 
 since he wrote his golden Greek. 
 
 A great philosopher has said " I am afraid that very few 
 substantial advances have been made in psychology since the 
 days of Aristotle. Perhaps more people know something of 
 the human mind than knew anything about it in his time, 
 but I doubt whether any man of the present day knows 
 more about it than he did." 
 
 What a strange thing it would be to have Plato -and 
 
 3 TA 
 
18 
 
 Aristotle among us now ! How amazed they would be at our 
 modern learning ! How they would stare at our mannikin 
 sages who pass university examinations in the elements 
 of all things ! I do not believe either of them could pass the 
 matriculation examination of a certain Eastern university. 
 Plato would certainly be " plucked" in universal history, 
 and Aristotle in analysis of sentences. Fancy Plato and 
 Aristotle cramming a Pinnock's Catechism, or trying to re- 
 concile Mr. Buckle's Unphilosophy of History with facts, or 
 attempting day after day for a week, and in vain, to com- 
 prehend how it came to pass that the Spanish, the Scotch, 
 and Mumbo-Jumbo all had the same religion. 
 
 We are very far advanced in this age. We have got so 
 deep into the profundity of learning that we are in danger 
 of coming out at the other side. Our boys are philosophers, 
 and consequently our men are very often scientific dotards. 
 Too early bloom spoils the fruit. 
 
 Before leaving this part of my subject, suffer me to remind 
 you all — no matter what is your race, your religious creed, or 
 your profession or trade — that from the past comes that 
 teaching which must underlie, permeate, and transcend all 
 human learning, human belief, and life that is true. From 
 the past we receive the Revelation of the Will of God in all 
 its power of sublime beauty and unsearchable wisdom, the 
 guide of the immortal soul of man. Ever since the race of 
 man took being, God has taught. He has been in his work 
 and in his Revealed Will the Sovereign Teacher of man. 
 Never let us forget this sacred truth. 
 
 God has been our teacher; yet oh ! how little, how piti- 
 fully little, have we, God's creatures, learned from God our 
 Creator ! We have been in the school of God, and come out 
 mere dunces. We need to walk humbly for this. No true 
 wise-man will ever be proud, vain-glorious, conceited, 
 opiniated, or contemptuous of the opinions of others. Only 
 they who are essentially ignorant exhibit such characteristics 
 es these. They do not know how much they do not know. 
 
19 
 
 The greatest wise-man will be the quietest and most modest. 
 He feels himself a poor simple child laboriously striving to 
 learn in the school of the infinite wisdom and before the face 
 of God. 
 
 1 ' That which hath been is now, and that which is to be 
 hath already been, and God requireth that which is past." 
 
 It is by the study of the past, i.e., the culling of the 
 experience of those who have gone before us, that we avoid 
 becoming disciples in that most severe school of personal 
 experience. We gain the whole experience of others with- 
 out suffering what they suffered in gaining it. Roger 
 Ascham (obit a.d. 1558) speaks about this in his work 
 cc The Schoolmaster." He says—" Learning teacheth more 
 in one year than experience in twenty, and learning teacheth 
 safely when experience maketh more miserable than wise. 
 He hazardeth sore that waxeth wise by experience. An un- 
 happy master is he that is made cunning by shipwrecks, a 
 miserable merchant is he that is neither rich nor wise but 
 after some bankrouts. It is a costly wisdom that is bought 
 by experience. He may be witty indeed, but ever like a swift 
 runner that runneth fast out of his way and upon the night, 
 he knoweth not whither ; and verily they be fewest in number 
 that be happy or wise by unlearned experience." That is, 
 much real suffering and loss that accompanies the acquire- 
 ment of personal practical wisdom is avoided by learning 
 the past experience of others. 
 
 II. Of the Men op the Present as Teachers op the Age. 
 1. Our Teachers the Workers. 
 
 We are very apt to associate teaching with direct oral or 
 written instruction, and to think that none but they who 
 speak or write are teachers. 
 
 In direct opposition to this idea I place in the forefront 
 of the ranks of the teachers of the age the great workers of 
 the age. 
 
20 
 
 Now do not run away with tlie idea that you hare gut 
 hold of an out-and-out disciple of Mr. Thomas Carlyle. Do 
 not write me down dangerous, as if I were a mad dog, or 
 rotten ice, or gunpowder. I am a believer in the sacredness 
 of work, but it is in the sacredness of good work. I am also, 
 however, a thorough believer in the unsacrcdness, in the 
 devilishness, of bad work. A man who lives and dies and does 
 nothing is no true man. He who does evil is a devil's pro- 
 phet. He who does what is right — no matter what that is., 
 if it bo the utmost setting-forth of the power that is in him, 
 according to God's law for him — is a minister and setter-forth 
 of Divine will to that amount, and no less and no more. 
 
 Deeds are more powerful than words, and lives than doc- 
 trines. A man who does what is really a great and heroic 
 action produces more effect on his fellow-men than a whole 
 volume of words about duty and heroism. 
 
 Writers and speakers are largely workers and teachers,, 
 as we shall presently illustrate, but none of them in anything 
 Like so powerful a manner as the practical men, the workers 
 — the intelligent workers, who with head and hand do their 
 best in life for the glory of the Creator and the good of His- 
 creatures. 
 
 Those who have been the foremost in scientific, mechanical, 
 and commercial pursuits, who have been the discoverers of 
 great natural laws, and the inventors of practical applica- 
 tions of these laws in the economics of the human race, all 
 these have been, in a very large and exalted sense, teachers, 
 and their lessons have been productive of much happiness and 
 benefit to man. The life of a thoughtful, honest, diligent, 
 earnest working-man, no matter what his rank, from a 
 working king to a working hodman, is the finest sermon I 
 know. He teaches his fellow-men more than any orator, 
 bookmaker, or preacher ever did. He teaches by the vital- 
 izing* power of life. The holy sympathies of life are his. 
 Lives of such men as James Watt, Robert Stephenson, 
 Arkwright, Brunei, Berkley, Cyrus Field, John Leyden.. 
 
21 
 
 Captain Cook, Hugh Miller, Lord Herbert, Living-stone, 
 Wellington, Howard, Luther, Bishop Tait of London, Arnold 
 of Rugby, Chalmers, Robertson of Brighton, and Dr. James 
 Robertson of Edinburgh, all speak in themselves, apart from 
 the lessons in specific subjects which they proclaim. The 
 character of the life has influenced, is influencing-, and will 
 influence, the age. 
 
 The great lessons taught by a truly great worker are of 
 course, first, the lesson of his direct practical teaching : for 
 example, lessons in engineering from a Stephenson, in fight- 
 ing from a Wellington, in teaching* from an Arnold, in 
 Christianizing from a Luther, &c. &c. ; but besides these 
 there are many other lessons for life in them, lessons in 
 sobriety, self-denial, intense application, oneness of purpose, 
 continued diligence, and a wonderful humility. They have 
 indeed been mightiest teachers of men, men of the truest 
 and most prevailing influence, in their own days and the 
 days more immediately following. 
 
 Let me use Stephenson the engineer as an illustration of 
 what I mean. He was born a worker, lived a worker, and 
 died a world-renowned worker. 
 
 He was born a colliery fireman's son. His first work was 
 to mind a farmer's cows. Then he went to help to tend 
 the pit-engine. Brought into contact with machinery, his 
 mechanical genius was awakened. He wrought and studied 
 till he came to be able to attend to an engine himself, and 
 was famous in the district round as a pump " doctor/'' 
 
 The question of motive power on tramways was then 
 under earnest discussion among colliery proprietors and 
 engineers. All kinds of ideas were abroad, stationary engines 
 at intervals with hauling chains, locomotives with toothed 
 wheels, atmospheric engines, railways on dead levels wrought 
 by engines with toothed wheels, or atmospheric engines — a 
 thousand and one Utopian ideas were afloat. Stephenson 
 seized the two really practical ideas, steam locomotives with 
 smooth or friction wheels. With them he believed that very 
 
22 
 
 steep gradients -would form no obstacle to a very high rate of 
 speed. He laboured and thought, experimented and failed, 
 and experimented again till he succeeded. In spite of the 
 tough obstruction of the vis inertice of vested interests in 
 roads and coaches and canals, in the face of the ridicule 
 of the world, this indomitable worker — dreamer of dreams 
 he was called — made his impossible engine, constructed his 
 impossible railway through Chat Moss from Liverpool to 
 Manchester, and revolutionized the world with a hammer, a 
 spade, and some boiling water. 
 
 I have often thought of the contrast between Eobert 
 Stephenson in his moleskin raiment, all sooty from the 
 furnace smoke, putting soles on his future wife's carpet-shoes 
 by the light of the pit-fire far north in " canny Northum- 
 berland/'' and Stephenson settling by his opinion the railway 
 question before a committee of the House of Commons. 
 
 Some of you may remember a good story connected with 
 his appearance before parliamentary committees. He was 
 asked by a pompous M. P., who, I doubt not, thought he was 
 dealing a death-blow to railways, " Do you not think, Mr. 
 Stephenson, that in the event of such a train as that you 
 speak of, travelling at the rate of fifty miles an hour, 
 meeting a stray cow on the line the consequences would be 
 very terrible V " Indeed," said Stephenson, in his rough 
 Northumberland dialect, " I do think the consequences would 
 be vary tarrible indeed for the coo." 
 
 All this while he was teaching his race a lesson, of the 
 effect of which we cannot even yet guess the full import, 
 either in its mechanical, commercial, political, social, moral, 
 or religious aspects. He was teaching how to send know- 
 ledge and civilization over the earth with giant speed, and 
 placing nations in close contact which a few years before 
 were separated from each other by half a world. 
 
 In every working man who is diligently doing his duty to 
 God or man I would recognize a teacher of his age, influ- 
 ential according to the measure of his power. 
 
23 
 
 2. Our Teachers the Authors, including Poet&, Critics, 
 and Lecturers. 
 
 It were a waste of words to adduce proof of the teaching 
 influence of literature. Let us then, simply noting that the 
 influence of books is greater now than it ever was before, and 
 that it is increasing daily , a fact arising from the increase in 
 the number of publications and readers, proceed to notice a 
 few of the more prominent peculiarities of our Teachers the 
 Authors. 
 
 To begin, let us say a few words about our newspapers, 
 which have in this age a gigantic power. 
 
 Those civilized men who do not take newspapers are 
 curiosities. There must be some such, but they find a place 
 most likely in the " shows" of Barnum and Artemus Ward 
 with other natural curiosities. Newspapers have, I believe, 
 done more to educate the world than all the books on 
 science, philosophy, morals, and religion, put together 
 (always excepting the Bible, which is out of the category of 
 ordinary books, being God's Word) . 
 
 They have told the great mass of mankind what their 
 race was doing, thinking, saying, the round world over, and 
 for one reader a book has, a newspaper has its thousands. 
 
 Dean Alford recently stigmatized newspapers as cc false 
 guides," in his lectures before the young Men's Christian 
 Association at Exeter Hall, London. If the reports of what 
 he said are correct, he went too far. He seems to have con- 
 fused a part with the whole. Because some newspapers are 
 false guides it no more follows that all are, than it follows 
 that all deans are witty because Dean Swift was, or that all 
 prebends are men of eminent talent because Sydney Smith 
 was. 
 
 There are, of course, newspapers good, bad, and indif- 
 ferent. There are articles in them of which the dean's cen- 
 sure is undoubtedly true when he says they are written ' ' by 
 men who if their names were attached to the articles would 
 
24 
 
 be received with shouts of derision." There are doubtless 
 papers which pander to man's worst tastes. There are those 
 which feed the bale-fires of party-strife. There are those 
 which assume a most ludicrous air of egotistic infallibility. 
 But over against these we may set others, which speak the 
 truth in love, defend the right, advance knowledge, and 
 which are written by men who, though writing anonymously, 
 are men whose intellects are equal to any, and whose love of 
 truth and right is unimpeachable. 
 
 One danger from the press is that many men think it 
 infallible. Among the people one meets are many who swear 
 by their newspapers. In politics they are Nosier-pwperites . 
 In church politics they are the same. They are the same in 
 their Opinions of men, women, books, and things. Their 
 opinion on the war or the peace or panic is that of some 
 county-town " Thunderer." Their discontent is that of the 
 village " Friday Growl/' which may mean simply this, that 
 they have handed the key of their judgment over to some 
 briefless lawyer, or some half-educated cobbler with a 
 grievance, and the " Rights of Man" on his shelf. The print- 
 ing press is not a guarantee for infallibility. Each opinion 
 in each article is simply the opinion of one other man. 
 Printing the 'opinion does nothing to make the opinion 
 better or worse. Guarding ourselves against the fascination 
 of print and the mysterious influence of the editorial ' c we," 
 let us meet our teachers the newspapers, and learn their 
 message, as of the great working heralds of civilization and 
 knowledge. 
 
 What has been said of newspapers may be said of maga- 
 zines and books. In some senses magazines and books 
 have a greater influence than newspapers, though infinitely 
 fewer in number. The opinions which authors give to the 
 world in them are more deliberate, and in books especially 
 are generally given under the author's true name, which 
 is a guarantee for sincerity at least, and a declaration that he 
 is ready to peril his reputation on his printed utterances. 
 Besides this, a book is read deliberately, and lies on the 
 
25 
 
 library table or is set up on the shelves, to be referred to 
 again, and read and re-read, while the newspaper is for the 
 ■day and of the day. 
 
 Oar teachers the books have a great influence over us, 
 more than many of us imagine- If a man is an habitual 
 reader his books are largely his companions. He has his 
 ■circle of friends, too, in his study, a circle of friends often 
 more satisfactory than his personal friends, for they don't 
 forsake him if the sun leaves his side of the hedge, or his 
 shares turn out waste paper. They don't speak ill of him 
 behind his back, or forget him if he is out of sight. They 
 don't want to be quiet when he wants to make a noise, or 
 to be noisy when he wants to be quiet. They accept praise 
 without giving themselves airs, and, above all, suffer any 
 ■amount of abuse without speaking a single word in reply. 
 You may carry them with you where you please, and desert 
 them as long as ever you like, and yet after all they are 
 ready to smile on you, laugh with you, weep with you, 
 argue with you, cheer and teach you, just as they did before. 
 
 An individual's reading tends very largely indeed to 
 modify his character. A elever book may effect a radical 
 change in a man's character, it may start him on a course 
 of ruin, or may lead him into ways of prosperity and joy. 
 
 The effect of a single author's writings, and even of 
 single book, is sometimes very wonderful. A few common 
 examples may not lack interest. 
 
 Byron's poetry bit the world with a gripe like that of a 
 mad dog. All sorts of people became Byronic, and took to 
 raving, moaning, swimming impossible distances, seducing, 
 .cursing the world, turning down big shirt-collars, and get- 
 ting as near the devil as they could. 
 
 Sir Walter Scott's " Lady of the Lake," " Lay of the 
 Last Minstrel," and his other Scottish poetry filled Scotland 
 with tourists from all quarters of the globe, and really be- 
 came the means of changing the very habits of the people in 
 whole districts., by creating a desire for new routes, and thus 
 
 4 T A 
 
26 
 
 leading to the formation of new roads, which in time fixed 
 the tracks of commerce, and eventually developed new com- 
 mercial enterprises and fixed new centres for trade. 
 
 Hood's " Song of the Shirt" did an infinite deal to arouse 
 and stimulate philanthropic efforts in London and the world, 
 
 Mr. Dickens' " Nicholas Nickleby" finished the career of 
 many a Yorkshire schoolmaster. . 
 
 The writings of Arnold of Rugby initiated a more enlight- 
 ened system of high-class education. 
 
 Mr. Ruskin's finical ideas, as exhibited in many of his 
 works on Art, gave Pre-Raphaelitism a place, to the manifest 
 disfigurement of our galleries of modern painting. The 
 Reverend F. W. Robertson's writings have changed the 
 current of English theology. 
 
 Mr. Tennyson's two leading characteristics are influencing 
 he literature of the day very largely. These are his charac- 
 teristics of indefiniteness in his ideas of theology, philo- 
 sophy, and moral science, and his adjectivity of style, which, 
 though in his case it ascends to the height of beautiful word- 
 painting, in others descends to a mere heaping of epithets. 
 Indefiniteness and wordiness, mistaken for liberality of senti- 
 ment, depth of thought, and sublimity of style, are unfortu- 
 nately growing features in our literature. The peculiarities 
 of Tennyson are not a little to blame for both, and the fasci- 
 nation of genius magnifies the evil. 
 
 In such works and portions of works we see produced 
 certain evident effects. Those I have mentioned are great 
 works, evidencing high mental power, but there is special 
 reason why we should attend to the working of this prin- 
 ciple in these days. There are whole classes of books which 
 are directly teaching vice. We refer to " sensational''' 
 fiction and poetry. This style of writing is producing very 
 grievous effects visibly before us. Even novels called first- 
 class, and passing under misleading and enticing titles, de- 
 rive their interest from records of crime, and their plots are 
 the mere evolvings of the vices of coteries of vicious men 
 
27 
 
 and vicious classes of society. I quote as instances novels 
 not accounted bad, and which may be seen on drawing-room 
 tables and in the hands of ladies — " Paul Ferroll," " Lady 
 Audley's Secret," " Recommended to Mercy," and even 
 " Armadale." 
 
 There is a still worse class, imitations of French «novels, 
 and those which are unblUshingly immoral, and which many 
 Who do read them would not confess to have read. These 
 are the cheapest of all books of fiction, and they are pro- 
 ducing great ills among the young and thoughtless, and 
 those who cannot afford more costly books. They blunt 
 right moral feeling. They sap the true spirit of manliness, 
 which should be like Una for its purity and like Una's lion 
 for its strength. A taste for such reading is utterly apart 
 from the character of the true gentleman. 
 
 There are some magazines which I always make a point 
 of speaking against, whenever I get an opportunity. They 
 are of the same class as those books of which I have been 
 speaking. Chief representatives of the class are " Reynolds' 
 Miscellany," " The London Journal," and " The Welcome 
 truest." 
 
 I know that the two first of these are great favourites, 
 and that they have a very large circulation. They are 
 powerful teachers, bnt they are not true teachers. Their 
 influence is not healthy. They teach a false philosophy 
 of life. They pervert men's and women's ideas of the 
 source of true happiness. They familiarize the mind with 
 folly and crime, and treat of such things as murder, theft, 
 perjury, bigamy, adultery, seduction, gambling, and the like. 
 They introduce young readers to the jail, the casino, the 
 gallery of the " penny gaff," the ring, the hell, the thieves' 
 quarters, city dens of vice, and the dwellings of the magni- 
 ficently immoral. My hearers, members of the Mechanics' 
 Institute of Bombay, men with wives and daughters and 
 homes, put away such poisonous stuff from your libraries 
 and your houses. There is truly mental and moral poison 
 
heading. Poison not your own minds with such dangerous 
 material. Lay not such temptation in the way of others. 
 Have we not enough real vice and crime and folly in actual 
 life, without creating more in fiction ? Is there not danger 
 enough of our being contaminated by contact with real crime, 
 that we must use records of crimes that never were, to sully 
 the minds of our boys and girls, and our own ? Such read- 
 ing should be labelled " Elixir of Dastiness," u Poison for 
 minds/' or " Death for souls." He who doses himself with 
 it is a mental and moral suicide. 
 
 " What twaddle is here !" I think I hear my friencl 
 A. D. Vance, Esquire, to say, " What pulpit girlishness of 
 sentiment ! A true man can go anywhere and read any- 
 thing, and take no hurt." Good, my dear Vance, as far as- 
 that last expression goes, but what has that to do with our' 
 argument ? A true man, that is, we take it, a perfect man,, 
 a thoroughly manly person, can read anything and take no 
 harm, and we will give him as many bad books as ever he 
 chooses to read, and that will not be many, we trow, for we 
 shrewdly suspect that he will not choose to read any. But 
 what may this have to do with the subject ? Can you pro- 
 duce your true man, your perfectly manly person ? We 
 are not aware of the existence of this personage, and should 
 like to see him. Till he is forthcoming, suppose we label 
 the works of which we have been speaking " Literature for 
 the perfect/' and lay them aside as not for us. 
 
 Words are great deceivers. It is easy to talk (l cant' y 
 about manliness, perfection, and the like, but it is reality with 
 which we have to do, and not day-dreams. The truth is that 
 men are not perfect, and that men's hearts have an affinity 
 for evil, and their minds a natural leaning to bad ideas.. 
 Bad books, in common with all evil, must therefore pro- 
 duce bad effects as long as men are what they are. The 
 theory of pure manliness is very beautiful, but it must not 
 be allowed to take the place of the truth, seen and tangible,- 
 that man i,5 now very imperfect, and very easily seduced 
 into sin. 
 
29 
 
 The best way to get out of this temptation as regards 
 books is to keep out of it. If such reading as this hurts all 
 but the perfect, and if they are to be allowed to indulge in 
 it because they can read anything, the publication of such- 
 works may be allowed to cease at once, for a true man will 
 not have anything to do with them. The very fact that 
 such literature is demanded in the book-marts proves that 
 man is far from perfect, and if he is so such literature 
 will do him mental and moral injury. Shun all bad books. 
 
 Our teachers the critics are in great power in this age, if 
 We take them at their own estimate. If their teaching 
 power equals in any degree the noise they make about it,, 
 it must be tremendous. What oracles they are ! What 
 rhapsodies pour at times from their frenzied lips! How 
 they lash the follies of the age, till the air about them is 
 filled with hideous howlings ! What wisdom, hid from ordi- 
 inary mortals., is theirs ! 
 
 It is sometimes a most amusing sight to see a critic of the 
 reviewer school get hold of a great and noble book. Like a 
 very small pug dog when an elephant comes along the road, 
 he walks round it and round it with a kind of patronizing 
 snarl, as much as to say " What a very big beast you are, to 
 be sure, but what an ugly one ! Would you not be better 
 without that horrid trunk of yours, and that funny little 
 apology for a tail ? You are quite an. anachronism too. You 
 should have lived with the palseosaurus and the ichthyosaurus, 
 among the antediluvians j and would you not be better with 
 these tusks of yours tucked on behind, and would you not look 
 better if they were painted a fine mauve ? Just look at me. 
 What a contrast there is now between us ! and, I suppose 
 you are aware_, I am a perfect model of what a modern 
 beast of respectability should be— just look at my beautiful 
 proportions, my pug nose and band}?' legs, and gestketically- 
 cut tail and trimmed ears/'' Then round and round the 
 elephant the self-complacent little pug performs his amusing 
 antics — yaff ! yaff yaff ! 
 
30 
 
 Pure and intelligent criticism is a noble art, and is one of 
 the bulwarks of the truth. By it truth is separated from 
 error, and the grain of wisdom from the chaff of folly. It 
 is to the world of letters what the furnace is to the refiner, 
 or the winnowing machine to the farmer. But pure and 
 intelligent criticism is a rare thing, and many people mistake 
 a false criticism for the true, and take the critic's opinions 
 of things in place of thinking for themselves, and the re- 
 viewer's opinions in place of reading for themselves. Hence 
 the need of caution in accepting critical opinion or the 
 reviewers' notions. Reviewing is become a trade, and by 
 criticism a reputation for learning is easily obtained. 
 
 Saturday has its responsibilities. The reviews must be' 
 filled every quarter, every month, or every week, to suit 
 the taste of their readers. 'This commercial fact alone 
 should put us on our guard in accepting the teaching of the 
 critics. While some reviews are pure teachers of pure truth, 
 others are in the pay of the bookselling trade, and write up 
 the works which issue from particular presses, and write 
 down those which come forth from others. Some are i: free- 
 thinking," and sneer at every book written by those who be- 
 lieve in fixed principles. Some are " orthodox," and think 
 it their duty to hunt down the work of every one who has 
 ever in the course of his career exhibited the faintest scin- 
 tillation of original genius. Some are Cockney, and snarl at 
 the heels of those writers whose hapjoy lot has not been cast 
 within the sound of Bow Bells. Some " run amuck" at the 
 " objective," some at the " " subjective." Some play the 
 rogue's march at the heels of every Whig, and some at the 
 heels of every Tory. You will get a critique on some fresh 
 poem written by a man who knows about as much of poetry 
 as a hippopotamus knows of the art of photography, or a 
 disquisition on logic from some college youth who has just 
 mastered the Port Royal logic, and thinks himself a young 
 Whately. Or, worst of all, you will get the opinions on all 
 things of some dilettante wiseman who thinks himself a 
 heaven-born genius sent into this world to keep it right 
 
31 
 
 generally, but chiefly to direct the small amount of intellect 
 which may chance to be found in it over and above his own, 
 and who has somehow or other managed to get upon the 
 editor's lounge. 
 
 Over a cigar and a cup of coffee he will settle for us, in 
 a column and a half, the state policy of an empire, the com- 
 mercial tactics of a great city, the theology of a race, the 
 truth or falsehood of the last dozen works on Sanscrit letters 
 geology, botany, or astronomy, &c. &c. We have often 
 wondered at the universality of some of our polyglot philo- 
 sophers of the review school, and tried to discover how it 
 was that, appearing to know so much, they in reality knew 
 next to nothing at all. However, there is a place for every- 
 thing in nature, and Nature hath framed strange fellows in 
 her time. 
 
 fl Nature fits all her children with something to do. 
 
 He who would write and can't write can surely review, 
 
 Can set up a small booth as critic, and sell us his 
 
 Petty conceits and his pettier jealousies. 
 
 Thus a lawyer's apprentice just out of his teens 
 
 Will do for the Jeffrey of six magazines. 
 
 Having read Johnson's " Lives of the Poets" half through, 
 
 There's nothing on earth he's not competent to : 
 
 He reviews with as much nonchalance as he whistles, 
 
 He goes through a book and just picks out the thistles. 
 
 It matters not whether he blame or commend, 
 
 If he's bad as a foe, he's far worse as a friend. 
 
 Let an author but write what's above his poor scope. 
 
 And he'll go to work gravely and twist up a rope, 
 
 And, inviting the world to see punishment done, 
 
 Hang himself up to bleach in the wind and the sun. 
 
 'Tis delightful to see when a man comes along 
 
 Who has anything in him peculiar and strong, 
 
 Every cockboat that swims clear its fierce (pop) gun-deck at him, 
 
 And make as he passes its furious peck at him." 
 
 Let us be more independent in our judgments on authors 
 and workers. Let us think for ourselves, and not pin our 
 faith on what any party review says in religion or philosophy, 
 morals, literature, or assthetics. Let us seekthe fountain-heads 
 
32 
 
 of learning, and read for ourselves the great works of the day. 
 Review-reading is one great cause of the smattering we see 
 in these days. No really learned and conscientious scholar 
 will ever read the review of a work and make up his mind 
 on the question of its merits without reading the work itself- 
 To take reviewers' opinions and convert them into our own 
 is unfair to the author and unfair to ourselves. We must 
 know the text before we can judge of the sermon. We must 
 know the work reviewed before we are in a position to judge 
 of the review. We should suffer writers to speak for them- 
 selves, and not take their utterances as distorted by others. 
 Blind reading of criticism does grievous ill, just as intelli- 
 gent reading of the works of great men, combined with the 
 study of what the critics say of them is the finest mental 
 exercise. 
 
 A word or two about our teachers the lecturers will con- 
 clude this part of my subject. 
 
 li They who live in glasshouses should not throw stones/' 
 I hear some one say. Well, never mind ; a crash of glass 
 will relieve a dull monotony : let the stones come. 
 
 Soberly : what is the good of the modern invention of 
 popular lecturing ? Does it do any good to anybody ? 
 
 Viewed from the standpoint of the lecturer the invention 
 has a totally different aspect from that which it bears to the 
 audience. The lecturer is expected to take up and exhaust 
 some subject in an hour, to boil down a science or two and 
 give the essence of them ; to give an hour's extract-of-book 
 in such a way as at once to instruct and amuse. The funnier 
 the extract is the better. This being the case, two tempta- 
 tions beset the lecturer, and led by them he either makes his 
 lecture so practical as regards his facts that it is a mere far- 
 rago, a bundle of facts, the dry skeleton backbone of some 
 " ology," or he goes to the opposite extreme, and makes his 
 lecture a mere declamation. 
 
 It is a terrible thing, I assure you, to get one of those 
 neat official letters which begin " The Directors of the 
 Institute of hope that will favour them with a 
 
33 
 
 lecture this season," &c. Sometimes it involves the exhu- 
 mation of some brown volume (manuscript) of forgotten lore. 
 Sometimes it involves many hours' uncertainty as to the 
 subject to be descanted on, and the composition of an entirely 
 new disquisition amid all the doubts arising from some such 
 questions as " Will it do ?" " is it interesting ?" " will it 
 teach ?" " will it be soporific V and the like. I am afraid 
 that many of us lecturers are sad smatterers, but if people 
 will have lectures they must take what they can get, and be 
 thankful. My friend Mr. Vin. E. Gar says that the reason 
 why people like lectures is that man in the aggregate has 
 a natural inclination to take pleasure in seeing any given 
 individual man making a fool of himself ! Mr. Gar is a 
 great philosopher, so you may take his opinion at its worth, 
 and without any criticism of mine. 
 
 I shall here give two extracts from American authors 
 about lecturing. The first is from the " Autocrat of the 
 Breakfast Table : or Every Man his own Boswell ;" by Oliver 
 Wendell Holmes, a most genial author. It is in some re- 
 marks about " averages" that he introduces the subject : — 
 " An average, which I meant to speak about, is one of the most extraor- 
 dinary subjects of observation and study. It is awful in its uniformitj', in 
 its automatic necessity of action. Two communities of ants or bees are 
 exactly alike in all their actions, so far as we can see. Two Lyceum 
 assemblies of five hundred each are so nearly alike that they are absolutely 
 ^indistinguishable in many cases by any definite mark, and there is nothing 
 but place and time by which one can tell the remarkably intelligent 
 audience of a town in New York or Ohio from one in any New England 
 town of similar size. Of course, if any principle of selection has come in, as 
 in those special associations of young men which are common in cities, 
 it deranges the uniformity of the assemblage. But let there be no such 
 interfering circumstances, and one knows pretty well even the look the 
 audience will have, before he goes in. Front seats, a few old folks, 
 shiny-headed, slant up best ear towards the speaker, drop off asleep after a 
 while, when the air begins to get a little narcotic with carbonic acid. Bright 
 women's-faces, young and middle-aged, a little behind these, but towards 
 the front ; pick out the best, and lecture mainly to that. Here and there 
 a countenance sharp and scholarlike, and a dozen pretty female ones 
 scattered about. An indefinite number of pairs of young people, happy 
 but not always very attentive. Boys in the back-ground, more or less 
 5 T A 
 
34 
 
 quiet. Dull faces, here, there — in how many places ! I don't say dull 
 people, but faces without a ray of sympathy or a movement of expression. 
 They are what kill the lecturer. The negative faces with their vacuous and 
 stony lineaments pump and suck the warm soul out of him ; that is the 
 chief reason why lecturers grow so pale before the season is over. They 
 render latent any amount of vital caloric. 
 
 " Out of all these vaiious elements the audience is generated — a great 
 compound vertebrate, as much like fifty others you have seen as any two 
 mammals of the species are like each other. Each audience laughs and 
 each cries in just the same place of your lecture, that is, if you make one 
 laugh or cry you make all. Even those little indescribable movements 
 which a lecturer takes cognizance of, just as a driver notices his horse 
 cocking his ears, are sure to come in exactly the same place of your lec- 
 ture always. I declare to you that, as the monk said about the picture in 
 the convent, that he sometimes thought the living tenements were the 
 shadows, and the painted pictures the realities, I have sometimes felt as 
 if I were a wandering spirit, and the great unchanging multivertebrate 
 which I faced night after night was one ever-listening animal, which 
 writhed along after me wherever I fled, and coiled at my feet every evening, 
 turning up to me the same sleepless eyes which I thought I had closed 
 with my last drowsy incantation." 
 
 Another American author laments in pathetic language 
 that popular lectures have usurped the show business. He 
 says in his touching vulgar dialect — ■ 
 
 " Individ ooals who git hard up embark in the lecturin bizness. They 
 cram theirselves with hi souudin frazis, frizzle up their hair, and git 
 trusted for a soot of black close, and cum out to lectur at 50 dollars a pop. 
 They aint overstocked with brains, but they hev brass enuff to make suf- 
 fishunt kittles to bile all the sope that will be required by the ensooin 
 sixteen generations. Peple flock to hear urn in krowds. The men go 
 because its poplar, and the wimin folks go to see what other wimin folks 
 hev on. When its over, the lecturer goze and regales hisself with oysters 
 and sich, while the peple say ' What a charmin lectur that air was,' 
 etsettevy, etsettery, when 9 out of 10 of um dont hev no more idee 
 what the lecturer said than my kangaroo has of the seventh speer of 
 hevun." 
 
 Whether our American cousins merely pohe fun here at 
 lecturers and audiences, or whether their estimate is correct, 
 I leave you to judge, but having fallen on the subject I can- 
 not help saying a few words about the use and abuse of the 
 teaching of lectures. They are part and parcel of that 
 
35 
 
 intellectual movement which has developed itself in people's 
 libraries, atheuasunis, book clubs, mechanics' institutes, and 
 the like. By themselves they are almost useless. They 
 attain their true use only when in their proper position rela- 
 tive to other things. They are not of use as teaching any 
 science absolutely or exhaustively, nor in rearing up a 
 generation of royal-road wise-men, who would remain mere 
 smatterers, and nothing else, to the end. But they 
 are of use as affording an impetus to study, to reading, 
 and thought. Many a young man has, I believe, been led to 
 begin a profitable course of reading, or the study of some 
 specific department of science, by an interesting course of 
 lectures, or even by one lecture. 
 
 They are of use, too, in exhibiting the sympathetic vitality 
 of learning. It is a difficult thing for many men to keep 
 persistently at work in the closet on any particular science 
 or branch of science, but if they can come out of their shell as 
 it were, and feel that they have thoughts and aspirations and 
 difficulties like other men, and if they are brought in con- 
 tact with them when speaking of matters which are mutually 
 interesting, the issue of the contact is like that of steel with 
 flint. Fire, a spark of new zeal, is the consequence, and 
 the solitary student is cheered on his way. A lecture on 
 any subject is in this sense an excitant of vitality. A lec- 
 ture is also good in marking out tracks for others, for the 
 young, or for such as have but few means of acquiring 
 learning, and few books, and who may therefore reap lasting 
 benefit from even an hour's simple conversation with one who 
 knows more than they do. A lecture, to fulfil its object, 
 should not, therefore, be treated as an amusement merely, a 
 severer kind of entertainment compatible with the views 
 of those who cannot join in the frivolity of the theatre, the 
 casino, or the ballroom. It should always be treated as a 
 possible means of arousing thought. What can I learn from 
 the words he has uttered ? should be our test question when 
 brought into contact with our teachers the lecturers. 
 
 It is taking' the mere amusement view of lectures that 
 
36 
 
 leads the author of " Philip Van Artevelde," in his " Eve 
 of the Conquest," to put the lecture into the place previ- 
 ously occupied by the Maypole, and to lament over our pre- 
 sent austerity. He sings — 
 
 Oh England ! ' merry England' styled of yore, 
 Where is thy mirth ? thy jocund laughter where ? 
 The sweat of labour on the brow of care 
 
 Makes a mute answer ; driven from every door, 
 The maypole cheers the village green no more, 
 Nor harvest-home, nor Christmas mummers rare. 
 The tired mechanic at his lecture sighs ; 
 And of the learned, which, with all his lore, 
 Has leisure to be wise ?" 
 
 He who "■ sighs" over his lecture, and thinks it dull be- 
 cause it is not a maypole or a Christmas mumming, will not 
 agree with me that a lecturer should be a teacher. He and 
 Mr. Henry Taylor may await the advent of " leisure to be 
 wise ! " 
 
 III. Our Teachers the Helots. 
 
 The Spartans used to make their slaves, the descendants 
 of the people of Helos, drunk, to deter their children from 
 the degrading vice of drunknness. They thought that if 
 their children saw the slaves making grotesque fools of 
 themselves, and exhibiting the brute that was in them, 
 they would shun for ever practices which could so unman 
 humanity. 
 
 Without animadverting on the morality of this method of 
 training, we simply take the fact from amid many connected 
 with the history of education, and desire to point out that 
 in this day there are many Helots who, without our making 
 them intoxicated, are daily ready to teach us many very 
 practical lessons if we could only bring ourselves to learn 
 them. 
 
 The man who bungles his work teaches every one who sees 
 his bungled work not to do likewise. The man who is always 
 scheming, and whose schemes never succeed, teaches all 
 
37 
 
 who are cognizant of his chimerical plans to keep clear of 
 the like. The man who is always speaking and writing at 
 random, and who is therefore constantly rnnning into mis- 
 takes, warns all who know him not to exhibit their igno- 
 rance,, as he does. The man who is guilty of making false 
 or exag'gerated statements warns every one off his dangerous 
 ground. The drunkard, with his reeling gait and sodden 
 eye, and his final lurch into the nearest ditch, surely 
 teaches all who see him to shun the siren rice that can thus 
 bewitch out of man all that is manly, and leave but the 
 brute dregs behind. Every man who is guilty of sin should 
 be looked on as a teacher uttering forcible words of warn- 
 ing to the world. I am far from going the length to 
 which Pope went in his famous lines — 
 
 " Vice is a monster of such frightful mien 
 That to he hated needs but to be seen." 
 
 What he states as a fact that is, I state as something that 
 ought to be, a thing which we should all strive to bring to 
 pass. 
 
 Often may we have wished with Burns to know how we 
 appear to others : you know his quaint lines : — 
 
 " O wad some power the giftie gie us 
 To see oursels as others see us ! 
 It wad frae mony a blunder free us 
 
 And foolish notion. 
 What airs in dress an' gait wad leave us, 
 
 And e'en devotion. " 
 
 There is no power that can do this ; but man is man's 
 mirror, and we can all, if we choose, make use of our eyes 
 and our common sense, and when we see men exhibiting 
 their sins and follies we can say " Thus I appear when I sin, 
 thus I appear when I play the fool." 
 
 Let the Helots who have made themselves drunken with 
 th.3 wine of the grapes of vice, and who have once too often 
 quaffed the chalice of folly, be our teachers. Their lesson is 
 fearfully real; let us lose no sentence of it. The lessons of 
 
38 
 
 life are few enough, and life itself is short enough, for our 
 education in truth. We cannot afford to lose anything that 
 may make us wiser or better men. 
 
 Thus I have attempted to speak of a very few of our 
 teachers, their powers, their offences, functions, and their 
 failings. What are our duties in relation to these our 
 teachers ? We are learners ; how are we learning ? Are we 
 using aright the means at our disposal to make us wiser ? 
 Are we earnestly educating ourselves, or are we content in- 
 tellectually to remain just as we are ? Intellectual indiffer- 
 ence is still, alas ! too prevalent. Men will not suffer them- 
 selves to be fired by the sympathies of higher lives, and will 
 not allow their thoughts to be lifted by the power of the 
 thoughts of others who are higher than they. Which of us 
 is what he might be if he had learned all he might have 
 learned ? Who is there among us who knows all he might 
 have known ? Have we all learned all that the great human 
 teachers have power to teach ? Have we all learned all 
 that the greatest teacher, God, is willing to teach ? I fear 
 it is not so. We have neglected dutjt in this respect. Let 
 us rise to our duties and seize our precious privileges. 
 
 There are men among us who . could lead us far upward 
 and onward, toward the infinite wisdom, and we have not 
 learned as we might. No matter what is our present position, 
 from every possible teacher let us seek to learn somewhat 
 more than we know at present of the good, the beautiful, the 
 true. Let us live to learn, and thus learn to live. He that 
 rests contented with his present knowledge has flung aside 
 one of man's noblest attributes, that ambition which should 
 lead him ever to seek a higher knowledge, a wisdom and a 
 truth which is above and beyond, and not attained as yet, 
 and which even the eternal world will see gloriously pro- 
 gressing on a glorious way. 
 
 A poet has used a beautiful natural illustration to teach 
 
39 
 
 us somewhat about this ; it is borrowed from the chambered 
 nautilus : — 
 
 This is the ship of peavl which poets feign 
 
 Sails the uu shadowed main, 
 
 That venturous havk that flings 
 On the sweet summer winds its purpled wings 
 In gulfs enchanted, where the Siren sings, 
 
 And coral reefs lie bare, 
 Where the cold sea-maids rise to sun their streaming hair. 
 
 Its webs of living gauze no more unfurl, 
 
 Wrecked is the ship of pearl ! 
 
 And every chambered cell 
 Where its dim dreaming life was wont to dwell, 
 As the frail tenant shaped his growing shell, 
 
 Before thee lies revealed, 
 Its irised ceiling rent, its sunless crypt unsealed ! 
 
 Year after year beheld the silent toil 
 
 That spread his lustrous coil *, 
 
 Still as the spiral grew 
 He left the past year's dwelling for the new, 
 Stole with soft steps its shining archway through, 
 
 Built up its idle door, 
 Stretched in his last-found home, and knew the old no more. 
 
 Thanks for the heavenly message brought by thee, 
 
 Child of the wandering sea, 
 
 Cast from her lap forlorn ! 
 From thy dead lips a clearer note is borne 
 Than ever Triton blew from wreathed horn 
 
 While on mine ear it rings 
 Through the deep caves of thought I hear a voice that sings 
 
 ' Build thee more stately mansions, my soul, 
 
 As the swift seasons roll ! 
 
 Leave thy low-vaulted past ! 
 Let each new temple, nobler than the last, 
 Shut thee from heaven with a dome more vast, 
 
 Till thou at length art free, 
 Leaving thine outgrown shell by life's unresting sea.' " 
 
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