siou in tlie Hoxise of Commons, if represented by some active IMember connected 

 with the locality; and thus afford ns some hope of seeing this gi-eat measure 

 accomplished during our Ufetime. The millions spent in war are usually the 

 standing excuse for the denial of a few thousands devoted to this inestimable 

 home boon, which would save in parish and road surveys, and estate maps, at 

 least 25 percent, every year upon its whole cost; let us hope that we may be 

 heard upon this subject as soon as we have done civil-engineering for the 

 Abyssinians. 



There is one feature of a mournful character for which the past year has 

 been remarkable which I cannot help naming to you, viz, : the extraordinary 

 number of deaths of persons highly distinguished in science and literature : Sir 

 Archibald Alison, Sii- David Brewster. Dr. D.aubeny, Michael Faraday, William 

 Hamilton, John Hardman, Sir ^Villiam Snow Harris, Valentine lOiight, Sir 

 WiUiam Lawrence. Sir John Lubbock, Professor de Morgan, the Earl of Rosse, 

 Gideon Scott (C.E.), Sir George Smart, Sir Robert Smii-ke. Sir James South, 

 Clarkson Stanfield, and Lord ^ottesley, are names all most familiar to our 

 ears of men whom we never again shall speak of as being amongst us. Besides 

 these names of fellow countrymen, there are others with which we are almost 

 equally familiar. Baron Marochetti, the distinguished Italian sculptor whose 

 somewhat hard statuesquerie we men of Herefordshire gave precedence to, when 

 our own illustrious Gibson was stiU Uving, and surrounded in his studio by 

 a class of works which made you feel as if Greek art was not yet dead. I stood 

 in that studio at Rome, the day after I had followed his remains to the 

 Protestant Cemetery, and it was impossible not to feel a wish that we 

 had had something of his to decorate our County Hall. The lovers 

 of Photography will also recaU the name of Antoine Claudet, the great 

 successor and improver of Fox Talbot and Daguerre ; and I must not omit that 

 of Victor Cousin the great historian of philosophy. 



This is' indeed a mournful Ust, if there was any fear that the van of 

 advancing science would suffer discouragement, or waver when its leaders were 

 struck down. But the reverse is the truth ; for, of which of these may it not be 

 said that, though the individual be gone from us, the Name and the Works 

 remain an imperishable and increasing power to light forward many on the same 

 path. Indeed, if, on casting our eyes over the panorama of the present time, 

 with its disastrous monetary and commercial state, its babel-like confusion- 

 worse-confounded, of all political principle, the startHng and scandalous revela- 

 tions of a Ti-ades Union Commission, the senseless atrocities of the Feman 

 conspiracy, and, I may almost add to this list, the morbid and depraved 

 'sensation '-ism that has tainted and enfeebled a large class of our htcrature,-if 

 on reviewing these features of the time, we should be led to indulge mournful 

 or apprehensive reflections, I think that there is one reassimng sign of healthy 

 pro<Tcss existing, in the unmistakable and successful activity pervading the 

 field of Physical Science. It is not enough to say that it has gi-own-it has 



