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high names, and they have made cities famous, and villages 
into holy places, but they have hardly yet made for themselves a 
“local habitation and a name” on the banks of our not altogether 
unknown Brun. It has been whispered that Spenser came to 
Hurstwood or to “ Spensers” in Pendle Forest in his youth, 
pursued ‘“ by solemn vision and bright silver dream”; and some 
of us believe the whisper still. We have had a Hamerton who 
could find here no resting place, no permanent home for his 
aspiring soul. 
‘‘ War off the spectral glaciers shone ! ” 
From Rylstone Fell Wordsworth saw Pendle, with its lonely 
cloud, and recorded the fact in his ‘*‘ WhiteDoe,’”’ and Charlotte 
Bronté visited Gawthorpe, coming over the moors from Haworth. 
These names touch our factory chimneys as with a gleam of 
romance, and well-nigh exhaust our high literary associations. 
And now we shall have another association to mention along with 
these, for to-night the president of the Manchester Literary Club 
comes on a friendly visit to our Literary and Scientific Club, to 
talk to us on some of the high and beautiful things connected 
with literature and painting, Visits of this kind have been in 
Burnley hitherto, like those of the celestials, few and far between. 
Let us hope that one of the good things our society will accom- 
plish will be the bringing amongst us more frequently these 
messengers of light from the great centres of light. We dwell 
in darkness, we are “moving about in worlds not realized,’’ yet 
we of this association at least have turned our faces to the light, 
and welcome the torch-bearer who comes from afar. Manchester 
has a literary and artistic history of its own. It has riches of 
its own, and rare privileges to which we only as yet aspire. Men 
like Mr. Milner, who bring to us good things from lordly treasuries 
of art and poetry, are pure benefactors, and must never hope 
to receive anything in return from us in the same kind. We 
have yet to build our Palace of Art. We have yet a great many 
things to do before we can lay the first stone. We are in a pos- 
ition to receive, but not to give, and are likely to be in that 
position for some time tocome. But we may be content, knowing 
that it is good also to receive, and according to our capacities and 
opportunities, to enjoy, ‘ the things that others understand.” 
Mr. Milner then said:—The subject of the relationship 
which exists between Literature and Painting is beset with 
difficulties and hedged about with much controversy. Readers 
of Lessing’s Laokoon and of Sir Joshua Reynolds’s Discourses will 
_know to what it is that Iam alluding. On this point there have 
_ always been two distinct schools of criticism, the one contending 
for sharp definitions and accurate lines of distinction between the 
various arts, and the other being more or less inclined to merge 
differences and to discover analogies. A writer in the Quarterly 
