I find that there is
a class for drawing, a chemical class, subdivided into the
elementary branch and the manufacturing branch, most important
here. I find that there is a day-school at twelve shillings a
quarter, which small cost, besides including instruction in all
that is useful to the merchant and the man of business, admits to
all the advantages of the parent institution. I find that there is
a School of Design established in connexion with the Government
School; and that there was in January this year, a library of
between six and seven thousand books. Ladies and gentlemen, if any
man would tell me that anything but good could come of such
knowledge as this, all I can say is, that I should consider him a
new and most lamentable proof of the necessity of such
institutions, and should regard him in his own person as a
melancholy instance of what a man may come to by never having
belonged to one or sympathized with one.
There is one other paragraph in this report which struck my eye in
looking over it, and on which I cannot help offering a word of
joyful notice. It is the steady increase that appears to have
taken place in the number of lady members--among whom I hope I may
presume are included some of the bright fair faces that are
clustered around me. Gentlemen, I hold that it is not good for man
to be alone--even in Mechanics' Institutions; and I rank it as very
far from among the last or least of the merits of such places, that
he need not be alone there, and that he is not.
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