mechanics' institutions. 335 



simply because these pursuits have relation, real or imagined, to 

 their occupation as workmen ; — I would have them instructed in 

 the sciences in general, — as human beings, — and because, being 

 by nature capable of comprehending the properties of mind and 

 of matter, these properties ought to be rendered familiar to them — 

 or else their powers of comprehension are in so far wasted or 

 degraded, by being confined to inferior objects. 



But some kind friends of the industrious classes are fain to 

 mourn over the havoc which will be made in their comforts, by 

 the attainment of such a stock of general information as I have 

 alluded to. The fate of smatterers is in their mouths, and they 

 are apt to quote the lines of Pope as oracular and decisive — 



' "A little learning is a dangerous thing, 



Drink deep — or taste not the Pierian spring." 



Now this maxim taken without limitation is a fallacy. There 

 is no danger in having a little, if your opportunities do not 

 permit you to get all you would. What should we say to the 

 working man, who, entering his house at dinnertime, and seeing 

 the uncostly dish of potatoes and the modicum of bacon, which 

 his frugal wife, with an eye to the fare of the morrow, had pro- 

 vided — should overturn the table, scatter the provisions, and 

 trampling them under foot, express himself thus in heroic vein — 



" The spare repast I hate — be these my wishes, 

 Fat beeves or famine — feasts or empty dishes !" 



or what kind of counsellor should we hold him to be, who, 

 addressing a knot of persons waiting the opening of the doors of 

 a Savings Bank to deposit their small sums, should mock their 

 care and rebuke them thus — 



** Your little dabs of cash are useless things, 

 No paltry thrifts ! — be beggars — or be kings !" 



The first of these instances would be pronounced an absolute 

 fool or madman ; — and the second could only claim the posses- 

 sion of his wits by avowing his selfish treachery; — that, wealthy 

 himself, he could not bear that the lower classes should take any 

 well-concerted measures gradually to accumulate for themselves 

 a moderate share of wealth. 



Suspect, then, the judgment or the intentions of those who 

 talk with horror of smatterers — who indulge their small fancies 

 in tirades against royal roads to learning, and railways to science. 



There is an aristocracy of intellect as well as of birth or of 

 purse, and those who have by weary inches delved their way into 

 the mine, are proud of their success; — and perhaps, vain of the 

 pains they have taken, they are unwilling that others, by any less 

 laborious process, should reach the precious deposit. *'Tlie 

 evil," as the president of the Birmingham Philosophical Institu- 

 tion well said in one of his instructive lectures — "the evil 

 consists, not in knowing a little, but in fancying that we know 



June, 1835. — vol. ii. no. xi. 2 x 



