56 Technical Education. 



progress of mechanical arts in times of peace, and the successes 

 of our arms by land and sea brought the British into contact 

 with other nationalities, and obtained from them the know- 

 ledge of materials and methods unknown to us before. We 

 exchanged with other nations in the markets of the world, and 

 men of thought and skill sought refuge in England from the 

 strife and turmoils that disturbed their native provinces. 

 Edward III. encouraged clothworkers from France to settle in 

 Norfolk and other places, for at that period, as Fuller in his 

 Church History tells us, the people knew "no more what to do 

 with their wool than the sheep that wore it." A most impor- 

 tant accession of skilled workmen was obtained in consequence 

 of the persecutions that followed the revocation of the Edict of 

 Nantes in 1685, when a large number of workmen in various 

 trades took refuge in England, and were instrumental in stimu- 

 lating industries in the various towns then rising into importance. 

 This important accession of the Flemish and French refugees 

 to our slowly-increasing army of skilled mechanics stimulated 

 our industries, and contributed to the development of those 

 remarkable discoveries that subsequently revolutionised the 

 industrial world, and did more for the material welfare of 

 mankind than ages of abstract speculation, religious contro- 

 versy, and military campaigns. But great discoveries were not 

 the outcome of single minds. Robert Stephenson said of the 

 locomotive, "It has not been invented by any one man, but by 

 a race of mechanical engineers." The same may be said of 

 many other important inventions ; for like as the lowly coral 

 polyp toils quietly, laboriously, and unostentatiously in the 

 deep, generation after generation passing away, in the effort to 

 elaborate and combine the scanty materials of which the reef is 

 formed, and the winter's storm waves roll far above heedless of 

 the toilers, but do not check their progress, until at length 

 their combined result rises gracefully to bask in the sun- 

 shine and the air, a very refuge in mid-ocean, to become clothed 

 with fruitful palms and the beauty of tropical vegetation : — 

 so also generation after generation of obscure toilers investigate 

 phenomena, and accumulate experiences in the quiet of their 



