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the little busy bee improve each shining hour," The hour is not 

 shining, but the bee is busy swarming in an adjacent hive. I am glad 

 to find it has not affected in any way our gathering this evening. If I 

 have spoken to you in an informal way, it is because I felt that with 

 the important lectures before us this evening a more elaborate address 

 would be beside my duty. 



MR. F. MERRIFIELD ON "NINETEEN HUNDRED." 



It is sometimes good to look backwards. I believe it is often 

 better to look forward. Each of these views indeed— the retrospective 

 and the prospective —equally gives rise to a diversity of feelings. In 

 some persons, the retrospect only calls forth a lament over the good 

 old times departed, in others it evokes a feeling of contentment with 

 the advances made ; in like manner, the anticipation, while in some 

 it awakes alarming apprehensions as to the fate of all those institutions 

 that are most valued, in others it arouses the glowing aspirations that 

 spring from a contrast between the present and, if I may use an ex- 

 pression that seems like the name of a tense not known to gram- 

 marians, " the perfect future." You know that there have been several 

 histories of Brighton, the last of them by that wittiest member of the 

 Aldermanic. body, if the rest will pardon my calling him so, Mr. 

 Alderman Martin. I propose to give you a few features of the history 

 of the same place, and to do so, without in any way trespassing on 

 the ground occupied by the worthy Alderman, or the historians who 

 have preceded him. I am going to ask you to pass with me at a 

 bound from 1876 to 1900, and to look at Brighton as it will present 

 itself. This is really history, only seen from the other end ; and it has 

 this advantage over the usual, but inaccurate, form of history, that I 

 shall be able to defy all the worid to disprove a single word of what I 

 shall advance. Any of my hearers may, indeed, disbelieve me, but in 

 so doing what will he do but earn for himself that most opprobrious 

 of names, a sceptic ? Imagine me, then, as venerable in appearance 

 as I may hope to be in 1900, while I give you this sketch of the town 

 as it may appear in that Year of Grace. 



The population, according to the last quinquennial census, was 

 157,053. Regency-square is about the centre of the town : it has a 

 very old fashioned look, and one can plainly see that the pier— built 



