II 



pleasure upon days gone by when I say this : to have met years ago in 

 the lecture-room of the Cambridge Philosophical Society, such men as the 

 late Professor Sedgwick, to mention only one name, is a thing for which 

 to be thankful to the last day of one's life. The other way in which a 

 literary society may be advantageous, and which it has occurred to me to 

 mention, is this. There is much of what I may call local literature, which 

 may be studied with advantage through the instrumentality of local 

 societies. No country is richer than Cumberland in local customs, and 

 peculiarities, and history. These things like the ruins of the Roman 

 wall, or our old castles and abbeys, are in a continual condition of decay; 

 folk lore constantly becomes more difficult to collect ; local traditions and 

 curious local superstitions have a tendancy to vanish ; even our fine 

 Cumberland dialect is likely to be improved off the face of the earth by 

 schoolmasters and school-boards ; and a local literary society may do good 

 work by being to such like things that which a local jnuseum is to 

 antiquities — namely, a home where they may find rest in the midst of the 

 bustle and progress of this prosaic, matter-of-fact world. I observe that 

 one of the arrangements for to-morrow is a paper on " The Cumberland 

 Dialect," by Mr. John Richardson. I can easily conceive that the trans- 

 actions of a very humble literary society might, Avith the help of an 

 intelligent secretary (for that is quite indispensable), become, in the course 

 of say fifty years, of great and general value. 



2. And, now, turning to Science, much of what 1 have said con- 

 cerning literature will, mutatis mutandis, be applicable. But the field of 

 operation for a local society, with respect to science, is, if I am not mis- 

 taken, more extended than it is with respect to literature. The pursuit 

 of literature is cliiefiy confined to the house, and to the time that can be 

 given to books, but science may be cultivated, in a certain sense, every- 

 where, and at all times {semper, uhique, et ah omnibus), and it is perfectly 

 possible that a local scientific society, with the indispensible requisite (to 

 which I have before referred) of a good secretary, and therefore, with 

 good direction and management, may teach men, who are not profession- 

 ally scientific, to make many useful observations, and to add much to their 

 own enjoyment of this world in which God has placed them. 



