68 TECHNICAL EDUCATION. [LECT. 



which is termed experiment, of one kind or another ; 

 and, the farther we advance, the more practical diffi- 

 culties surround the investigation of the conditions of 

 the problems offered to us; so that mobile and yet 

 steady hands, guided by clear vision, are more and 

 more in request in the workshops of science. 



Indeed, it has struck me that one of the grounds 

 of that sympathy between the handicraftsmen of this 

 country and the men of science, by which it has so 

 often been my good fortune to profit, may, perhaps, 

 lie here. You feel and we feel that, among the so- 

 called learned folks, we alone are brought into contact 

 with tangible facts in the way that you are. You 

 know well enough that it is one thing to write a 

 history of chairs in general, or to address a poem to 

 a throne, or to speculate about the occult powers of 

 the chair of St. Peter ; and quite another thing to 

 make with your own hands a veritable chair, that 

 will stand fair and square, and afford a safe and satis- 

 factory 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 



