76 TECHNICAL EDUCATION. 



operations of exceeding delicacy. The progress of all 

 branches of physical science depends upon observation, 

 or on that artificial observation which is termed experi- 

 ment, of one kind or another ; and, the farther we ad- 

 vance, the more practical difficulties surround the inves- 

 tigation 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 work- 

 shops 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. Tou 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 satisfactory resting-place 

 to a frame of sensitiveness and solidity. 



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

 tific 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; 



