4 
DEVELOPMENT OF EDUCATION. 
us in accurate observation and sound induction. Not only so, but 
the study of nature brightens every phase and aspect of the daily 
life. The environment of a large city, if it developes some very 
valuable qualities, has its attendant dangers. It may cramp the 
interest, limit the horizon and fetter the mind. The warehouses 
and the factories, the streets and the quays, are no doubt in one 
sense of the phrase ‘ sermons in stones,’ but the woods and the 
fields, the fells and the glens, the rivers and the sea, can teach us 
lessons even more important ; lessons which can often drive away 
anxieties and fill the mind with thoughts and memories to brighten 
the hours of labour, in the office, the shop, or the factory. To 
take an interest in something, quite separate from the routine of 
our lives, is one of the best of tonics. 
But while ‘ he who runs may read ’ some pages of Nature’s vast 
encylopiedia, only those whose faculties have been trained, can 
decipher others. For this purpose your Society was founded 
ninety years ago and these sumptuous additions have now been 
made to its buildings, of which I can hardly say better than that 
they are worthy of your city and it is worthy of them ; because 
York is one of four which are prominent among the towns of 
England for the interest of their history and the charm of their 
architecture—the others of course, being Chester, Oxford and 
Cambridge. I will not attempt to place these four in order of 
merit, but will remember the old saving about comparisons and 
bracket them together. Yorkshire also, that great fraction of our 
own country, cannot be surpassed by any other like division in the 
manifold attractions of its scenery and its relics of olden time. 
A broad river valley seems, at first sight, to offer little to engage 
the attention of geologists, but the valley of the Ouse, in the very 
precincts of York, retains relics of the Glacial Epoch, on the 
significance of which they are not yet agreed, while the botanist 
(as that admirable guide book told us of the British Association 
six years ago), can find ample employment within a few miles from 
your Minster. No place in Britain is richer than York in memories 
of the past ; the history of your city is almost an epitome of the 
history of England. My friend, Professor Boyd Dawkins, can tell 
you better than I, of the times about which written annals are 
silent, so I will take up the story where it begins to be graven in 
stone, with the coming of the Romans. 
More than a century elapsed after Caesar's galle} 7 s had been 
beached on the shores of Kent, before their troops had crossed the 
