IT. 



MATTER AND FORGE. 



IT is the custom of the Professors in the Royal School 

 of Mines in London to give courses of evening lectures 

 every year to working-men. Each course is duly adver- 

 tised, and at a certain hour the working-men assemble to 

 purchase tickets for the course. The lecture-room holds 

 six hundred people, and tickets to this amount are disposed 

 of as quickly as they can be handed to those who apply for 

 them. So desirous are the working-men of London to 

 attend these lectures, that the persons who fail to obtain 

 tickets always bear a large proportion to those who suc- 

 ceed. Indeed, if the lecture-room could hold two thousand 

 instead of six hundred, I do not doubt that every one of its 

 benches would be occupied on these occasions. It is, 

 moreover, worthy of remark that the lectures are but rarely 

 of a character which could help the working-man in his 

 daily pursuits. The knowledge acquired is hardly ever of 

 a nature which admits of being turned into money. It is a 

 pure desire for knowledge, as a thing good in itself, and 

 without regard to its practical application, which animates 

 these men. They wish to know more of the wonderful 

 universe around them ; their minds desire this knowledge 

 as naturally as their bodies desire food and drink, and to 

 satisfy this intellectual want they come to the School of 

 Mines. 



It is also my privilege to lecture to another audience in 

 4 



