MEETINGS. 21 



and sometimes fourteen hours of the twenty-four have been 

 absorbed in arduous daily duties, I have still found time to 

 devote short seasons to the cultivation of those studies of 

 nature which I am now so intent upon recommending to 

 others : and this because I believe that such studies will help 

 to make each one — as I hope they have made me — a better 

 and happier man. 



I cannot imagine, on the wide face of the creation, a 

 more melancholy sight than that of a human being living — 

 is that the proper term ? — vegetating, rather, for twenty, 

 forty, perhaps eighty years, on this beautiful globe, and then 

 leaving it after this long space of wasted time with no more 

 appreciation of its beauties and wonders than " the beast that 

 perisheth." 



These views on the wider diffusion of natural science among 

 the people are not the outcome of merely recent convictions 

 on my part. A few days since I accidentally came across a 

 letter dated from New York in 1851, addressed to the late 

 Nicholas Le Beir, secretary of the Farmers' Club at the 

 Castel, Guernsey, and written in acknowledgment of the 

 honour conferred upon me by that Club, on electing me a 

 member of their body. I feel tempted to read you a few 

 sentences of that letter in order to show you that the views I 

 now advocate on this subject are identical with those I held 

 at that earlier period of my life : — 



" The rich mines of literature and science have, my dear sir, 

 been too long considered the exclusive " patent right " of the wealthy 

 and learned few ; and it is high time that the mechanic, the artisan, 

 and the worker of the soil, should wake up from the death-like torpor 

 and apathy with which they have been so long afflicted, and be made 

 sensible of the inexhaustible stores of substantial unalloyed pleasure, 

 of the rich intellectual feasts, of which they (in the midst of abun- 

 dance) are daily depriving themselves, through their own negligence. 



" The thousand barriers which of yore tended to hinder or 

 slacken the progress of knowledge are now no longer serious obstacles 

 to its diffusion or cultivation. The philosopher of the present day, 

 unlike the heathen priest of old, who studied science but with the 

 special view of converting it into an engine of delusion and supersti- 

 tion, delights in communicating his discoveries, in explaining them 

 familiarly, and in pointing out their application to the useful and 

 ornamental arts. The unenviable reputation which some branches 

 of natural science once enjoyed as being under the special patronage 

 of the Prince of Darkness, no longer need deter any ardent lover of 

 nature from prying into her most hidden mysteries, under the fear of 

 being branded as a professor of the "black art" ; and instead of 

 being thought inimical to the teachings of her younger sister — 



