4 Literary and Philosophical Society. 



mysterious than all nature shows ; it is explained in the 

 first volume of the Society's Memoirs, and will be repeated 

 here in due time. 



Notwithstanding this, the growth of such an institution, 

 standing out by itself in provincial England, is a phenome- 

 non which requires attention, because the city contained 

 only 27,246 l inhabitants in 1773, when the Society was 

 collecting its strength but had not yet assumed a name. 

 We have many cities as large in our times, but we have few 

 with the vigour of early Manchester, and that apparent 

 prevision and real confidence in the future which men feel 

 to be equal to a powerful argument and one that wins 

 when reason fails. 



We remember being told of certain difficulties in 

 managing the workers of a mill at Oldham, and it was 

 asked why not have bought or built a mill at some other 

 place, since you knew how difficult it was to begin at that 

 town ? The reply was a typical one, ' The peculiar thread 

 spun at Oldham can be spun nowhere else at present, 

 because generations have grown into the habit.' And so 

 the life of a place becomes characteristic because the early 

 inhabitants had their peculiarities ; in the same way, when 

 a little village of last century with an unusual sound of 

 a letter or a word becomes in the course of less than a 

 century a large city, it is observed that every one is subdued 

 by the peculiarity of the early typical individuals, and 

 follows the same occupation with the same speech and 

 manners, and notably the same pronunciation of one 

 specially marked letter. 



It matters not if people come from a different country, 

 their children become initiated into the peculiarities of this 



1 Percival's Works, vol. iv. 



