382 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE. 
knowledge, as a thing good in itself, and without regard 
to its practical application, which animates the hearers of 
these lectures. 
It is also my privilege to lecture to another audience in 
London, composed in part of the aristocracy of rank, while 
the audience just referred to is composed wholly of the 
aristocracy of labor. As regards attention and courtesy to 
the lecturer, neither of these audiences has anything to 
learn of the other; -neither can claim superiority over the 
other. It would not, perhaps, be quite correct to take 
those persons who flock to the School of Mines as average 
samples of their class; they are probably picked men 
the aristocracy of labor, as I have just called them. At 
all events, their conduct demonstrates that the essential 
qualities of what we in England understand by a gentleman 
are confined to no class; and they have often raised in my 
mind the wish that the gentlemen of all classes, artisans as 
well as lords, could, by some process of selection, be sifted 
from the general mass of the community, and caused to 
know each other better. 
When pressed some months ago by the Council of the 
British Association to give an evening lecture to the work- 
ingmen of Dundee, rny experience of the workingmen of 
London naturally rose to my mind; and, though heavily 
weighted with other duties, I could not bring myself to 
decline the request of the Council. Hitherto, the evening 
discourses of the Association have been delivered before 
its members and associates alone. But after the meeting 
at Nottingham, last year, where the workingmen, at 
their own request, were addressed by our late president, 
Mr. Grove, and by my excellent friend, Professor Huxley, 
the idea arose of incorporating with all subsequent meetings 
of the Association an address to the workingmen of the 
town in which the meeting is held. A resolution to that 
effect was sent to the Committee of Recommendations; 
the Committee supported the resolution; the Council of 
the Association ratified the decision of the Committee; 
and here I am to carry out to the best of my ability their 
united wishes. 
Whether it be a consequence of long-continued develop- 
ment, or an endowment conferred once for all on man at 
his creation, we find him here gifted with a mind curious 
