8 C. O. BURGE. 



education or self improvement. It was only when the 

 steam engine spread over sea and land, enabling one man 

 to do the work of many, that mental and bodily comfort 

 was attainable. It is the universal experience that, as 

 machinery advances, not only wages, but the purchasing 

 power of wages, rise, and with them the standards of life. 

 A recent writer says that most people would resent it, as 

 a bad joke, if told that the steam engine was the author 

 of their being, and that they were more nearly related to 

 it than to their uncles and aunts. Yet were it not for the 

 machines worked by steam, probably more than half of us 

 would never have existed. 



Yet, among the young men of our day what are the names 

 of Kelvin, of Lodge, of Rayleigh, of Dewar, and others, 

 beside that of a famous cricketer, or of the man who can 

 kick a ball further and straighter than another ? We may 

 allow that mental culture cannot stand alone, it must be 

 the outcome of sufficient physical training. The old maxim 

 " Mens sana in corpore sano," is ever true, but are we not 

 overloading the latter part of the prescription? The 

 traditional irishman is sneered at for regarding fighting as 

 an end, and not a means, but are not the Australians earn- 

 ing the reputation of confounding means and ends, in an 

 even more absurd way ? The combination is as old as Plato, 

 who laid down music and gymnastics as the twin bases of 

 education, the word Movau<, h of course, including all art and 

 literature, but the gymnastics were regarded as means 

 only, for the double purpose of efficiency in war, and for 

 the training of the body, so that it should be intellectually 

 vigorous. 



The man of science is unappreciated, because his gifts 

 are unsought, and when conferred, are rapidly rendered 

 commonplace by constant use, and often that use does not 

 become available for some years after the invention has 



