408 TECHNICAL EDUCATION xvi 



tory resting-place to a frame of sensitiveness and 

 solidity. 



So it is with us, when we look out from our sci- 

 entific handicrafts upon the doings of our learned 

 brethren, whose work is untrammelled by anything 

 '' base and mechanical," as handicrafts used to be 

 called when the world was younger, and, in some 

 respects, less wise than now. We take the greatest 

 interest in their pursuits; we are edified by their 

 histories and are charmed with their poems, which 

 sometimes illustrate so remarkably the powers of 

 man's imagination; some of us admire and even 

 luimljly try to follow them in their high philo- 

 sophical excursions, though we know the risk of 

 being snubbed by the inquiry whether grovelling 

 dissectors of monkeys and blackbeetles can hope to 

 enter into the empyreal kingdom of speculation. 

 But still we feel that our business is different; hum- 

 bler if you will, tliough the diminution of dignity 

 is, perhaps, compensated by the increase of reality; 

 and that we, like you, have to get our work done in 

 a region where little avails, if the power of dealing 

 with practical tangible facts is wanting. You 

 know that clever talk touching joinery will not 

 make a chair; and I know that it is of about as 

 much value in the physical sciences. Mother Na- 

 ture is serenely obdurate to honeyed words; only 

 those who understand tlie ways of tilings, and can 

 silently and effectually handle them, get any good 

 out of her. 



