30 JOURNAL OF THE PLYMOUTH INSTITUTION. 
papers to distract their attention, nor periodical literature, nor 
cheap books of any kind ; but how rich was the enjoyment of the 
stolen interviews of the then young, but now old, boys with 
Robinson Crusoe, with the terrors of the classical Macaulay, 
another of our old members, impending ! How delightful their 
converse with Sandford and Merton ! What bargainings and 
chaff erings for marbles, taws, and alleys in exchange for loans 
of the current stock of literature, limited to Pope's Homer, 
Odyssey, and Iliad, Anson's Voyages Around the World, Rollin's 
Ancient History, Captain Cook's Voyages, Milton's Paradise Lost, 
Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, Fenelon's Adventures of Telemachus, 
and a few others. 
It may not be so now, for unfortunately I have not much access 
to school-going boys ; but I am very certain that Robinson Crusoe 
made more sailors out of my school-fellows than anything else, 
and I find it difficult to believe other than that every worthy 
reader of Robinson Crusoe was more or less a sailor at heart. 
What a terror he was to fond parents, fearing hydromania from his 
bite ! I was bitten by him, and never recovered ; for if you do 
not know him, I must tell you that he was a Professor of Techno- 
logical Chemistry as well as of Geography and of Navigation, &c. 
Can literature and science afford to quarrel 1 Surely not. What 
could the scientific man do without a literature to suggest and 
judge his thoughts, to enable him to store up the results of his 
researches, and to diffuse with rapidity and efficiency the fruits of 
his labours'? 
But if literature has conferred power on science, surely the 
benefit has been returned with usury. Does a great man worthily 
express thoughts influencing the destinies of nations, they are 
flashed or expressed in black and white in print within a few hours 
all the world over by the most perfect representative of science, 
the electric telegraph. I have myself in San Francisco, on the 
shores of the Pacific, at breakfast, enjoyed the reading of the 
speeches of the night before in the House of Commons. 
We need only glance at our walls to be reminded that amongst 
our old members were worthy labourers in literature. Col. 
Hamilton Smith, by his writings on natural history, will not soon 
be forgotten ; Dr. Tregelles, by his contributions to Biblical lore, 
has made his mark for all time, on the national literature. Who 
that had the privilege to listen to the discourses of Wightwiek, of 
