1857.] General Monthly Meeting, 333 



and make divine. Because the Englishman is a poor creature when 

 he is busy with abstractions, and the strongest of all when he is 

 dealing with realities, Milton would have him trained in these. 

 All exercises and all recreations are to contribute to the same end. 

 The pupils are to learn " the exact use of their weapon," both 

 as " a good means of making them healthy, nimble, and well in 

 breath, and of inspiring them with a gallant and fearless courage, 

 which being tempered with seasonable precepts of true fortitude 

 and patience, shall turn into a native and heroic valour, and make 

 them hate the cowardice of doing wrong/* In their very sports 

 they are to learn the rudiments of soldiership. 



Music is not recommended as a graceful recreation to a few, 

 but as an instrument of making all the pupils " gentle from rustic 

 passions and distempered passions." 



Certainly, whatever the errors of Milton's system may have 

 been, its ends were as noble and as practical as those of any that 

 was ever conceived. An institution trained, as this is, to profit by 

 the experiments of honest seekers in natural science, even if those 

 experiments prove failures, will not despise the experiments of a 

 moralist and a patriot who may have committed mistakes which the 

 most ignorant may detect, who had a righteousness of purpose' 

 which the wisest will be most ready to admire and most eager to 



[F. D. M.] 



GENERAL MONTHLY MEETING, 

 Monday, February 2. 



William Pole, Esq. M.A. F.R.S. Treasurer and Vice-President, 

 in the Chair. 



John Lister, Esq. and 

 Joseph Wood, Esq. 



were duly elected Members of the Royal Institution, 



Thanks were voted to Dr. Tyndall and Rev. F. D. Maurice, 

 for their Discourses on January 23 and 30. 



The special thanks of the Members were returned to Miss 

 A. Savage for a handsomely bound copy of her father Mr. W. 



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