TECHNICAL EDUCATION. 571 



polite to put the question openly to me : " What does the speaker 

 know practically about this matter? What is his handicraft?" I 

 think the question is a very proper one, and, unless I were prepared 

 to answer it, I hope satisfactorily, I should have chosen some other 

 theme. 



The fact is, I am, and have been any time these thirty years, a 

 man who works with his hands a handicraftsman. I do not say this 

 in the broadly metaphorical sense in which fine gentlemen, with all 

 the delicacy of Agag about them, trip to the hustings about election- 

 time, and protest that they, too, are working-men. I really mean my 

 words to be taken in their direct, literal, and straightforward sense. 

 In fact, if the most nimble-fingered watchmaker among you will come 

 to my workshop, he may set me to put a watch together, and I will 

 set him to dissect, say, a black-beetle's nerves. I do not wish to vaunt, 

 but I am inclined to think that I shall manage my job to his satisfac- 

 tion sooner than he will do his piece of work to mine. 



In truth, anatomy, which is my handicraft, is one of the most diffi- 

 cult kinds of mechanical labor, involving, as it does, not only lightness 

 and dexterity of hand, but sharp eyes and endless patience. And you 

 must not suppose that my particular branch of science is especially 

 distinguished for the demand it makes upon skill in manipulation. A 

 similar requirement is made upon all students of physical science. The 

 astronomer, the electrician, the chemist, the mineralogist, the botanist, 

 are constantly called upon to perform manual operations of exceeding 

 delicacy. The progress of all branches of physical science depends 

 upon observation, or on that artificial observation which is termed 

 experiment, of one kind or another; and the further we advance the 

 more practical difficulties surround the investigation of the conditions 

 of the problems offered to us; so that mobile and yet steady hands, 

 guided by clear vision, are more and more in request in the workshops 

 of science. 



Indeed, it has struck me that one of the grounds of that sympathy 

 between the handicraftsmen of this country and the men of science, 

 by which it has so often been my good fortune to profit, may, perhaps, 

 lie here. You feel and we feel that, among the so-called learned 

 folks, we alone are brought into contact with tangible facts in the way 

 that you are. You know well enough that it is one thing to write a 

 history of chairs in general, or to address a poem to a throne, or to 

 speculate about the occult powers of the chair of St. Peter ; and quite 

 another thing to make with your own hands a veritable chair, that 

 will stand fair and square, and afford a safe and satisfactory resting- 

 place to a frame of sensitiveness and solidity. 



So it is with us, when we look out from our scientific handicrafts 

 upon the doings of our learned brethren, whose work is untrammeled 

 by anything " base and mechanical," as handicrafts used to be called 

 when the world was younger, and, in some respects, less wise than 



