342 REPORTS ON THE STATE OP SCIENCE. — 1916. 



classes may not be quite as great as it formerly was, they are still 

 capable of achieving as gi'eat success as ever in towns that lie off the 

 more beaten track, and appreciable success in the smaller manufacturing 

 towns. 



2. In every case the success of a course of lectures requires thorough 

 local organisation and the hearty co-operation of all classes. 



3. The best popular lectm^e deals rather with the important part 

 of education that concerns the spiritual side of man than the side that 

 deals with the immediate acquisition of knowledge. The effect is in 

 the main stimulating and suggestive, and a course only fulfils its full 

 purpose when such a result follows and is utihsed in supplying an 

 inspiration for further endeavour of higher educational value. 



4. Popular lectures that degenerate into mere forms of entertain- 

 ment, while they doubtless fulfil a useful purpose in supplying counter- 

 attraction to entertaiimients of less desirable character, may be harmful 

 to the cause of real education by discouraging more worthy endeavours. 



Dr. Fison's report embodies the results of experience gained by 

 others and himself in organising popular lectures under the direction 

 of the Gilchrist Trustees during a period of fifty years. A similar 

 historical account of the free lectures movement in Liverpool, prepared 

 for the Liverpool Library, Museum, and Arts Committee by Mr. G. T. 

 Shaw, Chief Librarian, on the fiftieth anniversary (1865-1914-15), has 

 been published by the Corporation and is here abridged. These two 

 accounts show clearly the position of popular lectures in large towns 

 both in the past and at the present time. 



Liverpool Corporation Free Lectures. 



Lectures to wliich the public are admitted free are regarded to-day 

 as necessary auxiliaries of public library work, and many committees 

 of public libraries in the United Kingdom have organised such lectures, 

 while many more would do so if funds and accomiuodation could be 

 provided. The Public Libraries Acts under which so many libraries 

 are established do not authorise payments for lectures. Liverpool was 

 fortunate in securing a private Act of Parhament for the estabhshment 

 of its public library and museum, and the promoters of that Act were 

 wise enough and enterprising enough to include in it a clause giving 

 authority to organise those free lectures, the jubilee of which in this 

 city we have now attained. 



No action was taken under this power until the year 1865. That 

 the matter was not overlooked; however, is proved by the fact that care 

 was taken to provide for a lecture-hall capable of seating 350 people in 

 the plans of the building for the hbrary and museum which Sir W. 

 Brown generously presented to Liverpool. This must have been one of 

 the first gifts oi a building for a public library and museum in England, 

 and it was certainly the first pubhc library and museum in this country, 

 built after the passing of the Public Libraries Act, to possess a lecture- 



