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of Edinburgh, Session 1867 - 68 . 
among our statesmen. Foreign nations were gradually out-run- 
ning us in the most important of our arts, and the French In- 
ternational Exhibition of 1867 exhibited even to some British 
statesmen the infatuation of their policy. Dr Playfair and the 
British jurors again sounded the note of alarm. Lord G-ranville 
and Lord Taunton have given public expression to the same 
judgment, and we may therefore hope that, under a wider consti- 
tuency and a wiser legislature, the rights of science may be 
vindicated; and that scientific instruction, beginning in our schools, 
may be extended to every department of art which contributes to 
the wellbeing of the citizen, and to the wealth of the empire. 
If these views are approximately correct, — if our statesmen, our 
lawgivers, and our official functionaries are unacquainted with 
science even in its popular aspects, what must be the intellectual 
condition of the residue of social life in the upper and middle 
ranks of the community ! All of us can testify, if we had courage, 
that there is not one person in a hundred who believes, or who 
understands if he believes, that he lives upon a ball of earth mov- 
ing daily about its axis, and annually around the sun ; and that 
these two motions are so adjusted as to give us that variety of 
seasons on which our daily happiness so essentially depends. How 
few know anything more of our nocturnal lamp, than that the 
moon has horns in one week and is without them in another. How 
few know anything more of the telescope and microscope, than 
that they look into one end of a tube, and see something nearer 
and larger at the other. How few know anything more of the 
barometer and thermometer, than that the one is placed inside and 
the other outside of the house, and that the one tells us something 
about rain, and the other something about cold. How few know 
anything more of their inner and outer being, than that the one 
requires to be fed, and the other to be clothed. 
To such persons scientific instruction must be the greatest of 
gifts ; and if we cannot wrest it from the State, it becomes our duty 
to accomplish by private enterprise what in other countries has 
been done by the nation.* The efforts of individuals must, of 
* The following valuable observations by a competent judge, Dr R. Angus 
Smith, F.R.S., justify many of our suggestions : — 
“ Within the last thirty or forty years the violent attempts to teach the 
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