142 Transactions of the Society. 



III. — The President's Address: Some Ideas on Life. 

 By Henry Woodward, LL.D. F.E.S. 



{Delivered January 21st, 1903.) 



Those who have in infancy been properly nurtured on a wholesome 

 diet of fairy tales and folk-lore, will carry with them through life, 

 even to old-age, many very pleasant memories of those delightful 

 friends of one's childhood, ' Beauty and the Beast,' ' Cinderella,' 

 ' Little Eed Eiding-hood,' ' Jack the Giant-killer,' ' Sleeping 

 Beauty,' ' Blue Beard,' and many others ; or if they belong to a 

 later generation than myself, they will in early life have been on 

 intimate terms with ' Tom the Water- Baby,' in Kingsley's wonder- 

 ful book ; or will feel, as most of us do, grateful to " Lewis Carroll " 

 (L. Dodgson) for having written ' Alice in Wonderland ' and 

 "Through the Looking-glass," for our delectation. Pleasant 

 indeed are such memories, — like the scent of heather from the 

 hills, — or " the odour of brine from the ocean." 



On Christmas holidays, in passing along the High Street 

 of the Eoyal Borough of Kensington, I was startled by a shrill 

 familiar voice from out the distant past, and suddenly, for a few 

 moments, I had sixty years lifted off my shoulders and became 

 once more a child at a school-room window in Norwich, looking on 

 with large eyes at the ineffable effrontery of Mr. Punch encounter- 

 ing the constable, and filled with admiration at the courage and 

 fidelity of his dog Toby. 



Perhaps the oldest themes, which are to be found broidered 

 into the later history, legends, and traditions of all races of man- 

 kind, are those which relate to the creation of the world and its 

 inhabitants, and their destruction by the flood. 



Apart from the sacred writings of the Hebrews, we have 

 Assyrian tablets and Egyptian hieroglyphs, while the Greeks 

 have given us in charming fables, and in many versions, the 

 account of Prometheus forming men of clay and stealing fire from 

 the chariot of the sun to endow them with life ; of Deucalion and 

 Pyrrha rescued from the flood, and afterwards renewing the human 

 race by throwing stones behind them which became men; of 

 Epimetheus and his wife Pandora, and the story of the sealed 

 box, which she was forbidden to open, and how the curiosity of 

 Pandora caused her to raise the lid, when all the evils incident 

 to humanity poured out, and the only good remaining was Hope, 

 which has been the solace of mankind ever since. 



