408 TECHNICAL EDUCATION xvi 



and afford a safe and satisfactory resting-place to 

 a frame of sensitiveness and solidity. 



So it is with us, when we look out from our 

 scientific handicrafts upon the doings of our 

 learned brethren, whose work is untrammelled by 

 anything "base and mechanical," as handicrafts 

 used to be called when the world was younger, and, 

 in some respects, less wise than now. We take the 

 greatest interest in their pursuits ; we are edified 

 by their histories and are charmed with their 

 poems, which sometimes illustrate so remarkably 

 the powers of man's imagination ; some of us 

 admire and even humbly try to follow them in 

 their high philosophical excursions, though we know 

 the risk of being snubbed by the inquiry whether 

 grovelling dissectors of monkeys and blackbeetles 

 can hope to enter into the empyreal kingdom of 

 speculation. But still we feel that our business is 

 different ; humbler if you will, though the dimi- 

 nution of dignity is, perhaps, compensated by the 

 increase of reality ; and that we, like you, have to 

 get our work done in a region where little avails, if 

 the power of dealing with practical tangible facts is 

 wanting. You know that clever talk touching 

 joinery will not make a chair ; and I know that it is 

 of about as much value in the physical sciences. 

 Mother Nature is serenely obdurate to honeyed 

 words ; only those who understand the ways of 

 things, and can silently and effectually handle 

 them, get any good out of her. 



