The Sun.
London, England, 1864-12-05 00:00:00

P OR ITATRICK.

A special general meeting of this company was
held at Stranraer on Friday, for the purpose of con-
sidering an agreement entered into with the Cale-
donian Railway Company for the working of the
line ; the Earl of Stair presided.
The CHAIRMAN, in moving the adoption of the
agreement, ciplained that the Caledonian Company
undertook to work the line for 38 per cent. of the
gross receipts, the work percentage was to diminish
with the increase of the trbfac, 33 per cent. being
the minimum. The Caledonian Company had also
agreed to take over the plant, &c., on terms favour-
able to the Portpatriek Company, and to work the
line, not merely as a local, but as a through line,
in connection with the Irish traffic by the short sea
passige. The arrangement was a liberal one, and
would result in rendering available to the Portrat-
rick Company the sum of £30,000 for the reduction
of their debenture debt, while the charge for work-
ing was such that, joined to a moderate revenue, he
believed that at no distant date they would be
able to declare a dividend on the capital of the com-
pany.

Sir W. DUNBAR seconded the motion, and it Was
carried unanimously.

EAST NORFOLK.

Lord Suffield has been elected chairman of this
company. Mr J. Goodson, of the Great Eastern,
has been appointed deputy chairman.

A CURIOUS !Box Or MSS.—Mr. Coventry Pat-
more has presented to the MS. Department of the
British Museum a Collection of MS. Plays, or part of plays,
about 160 in number, which formerly constituted the
theatrical chest of Drury-lane Theatre while under the ma-
nagement of R. Brinsley Sheridan. This chest was depo'.
sited by Sheridan, soon after the fire in 1809, with the late
Mr John Marshall, of Soho-square, as security for a loan of
£BOO. The loan was never repaid, and Mr Marshall even-
tually parted with the collection to Mr P. G. Patmore, the
father of the present donor. The collection contains auto-
graphs or copies of several well-known pieces by O'Keefe,
Cobb, Mrs Inchbald, &c. But by far the greater number
and the most interesting of the pieces are unpublished, and
some have never even been played. Among the autographs
is a piece called " Ixion," the first dramatic attempt of She-
ridan, in conjunction wi"i. his school-fellow llalhead.
Moore's " Life of Sheridan" contains some quotations from
this piece. Moore, who speaks of it under the title of
" Jupiter," says that it was a farce, or play, in three acts,
" written:in imitation of the burletta of Midas." There
are several pieces in the handwriting of R. B. Sheridan,
and of his son Tom Sheridan. There is likewise an opera
in the handwriting of Charles Lamb, and there is another
containing 27 songs, the author of which is aut Moore aut
Diabolus. Tho collection, we understand, has never been
submitted to any critic having extensive acquaintance with.
handwritings
Sand dramatic history of the time ; and at
seems probable that a close examination might discover
more interesting particulars in connection with it than are
apparent
.on the surface. Many pieces contain MS. cor-
rections in the handwriting of Sheridan. Two or three
are pantomimes—and, in addition, to tho dramatic pieces;
there aro several private letters, receipts, &e., from the
actors and dramatists of the time, addressed to R, 330
Sheridan,--silltenown.

Lord Stanley, M.P.. on Middle-Class

Education.

On Friday evening a meeting was held in the Mechanics
Institution, Manchester, Mr 0. Heywood in the chair, for
the distribution to the pupils in the institution school and
classes of the prizes and certificates won by them in the last
examinations. The room was crowded. The chairman in-
troduced L rd Stanley, who distributed the prizes aud cer-
tificates to the successful students.

Lord STA.NLVI, who was received with applause, said—l
believe we have now concluded the formal duty for which
I canto to this room, that of distributing the prizes gained at
the recent examinations by the pupils of this institute. It
is a duty which I always undertake with pleasure, and never
more than hero ; for often before, at various times, and on
various occasions,' it has been my fortune to appear before a
Manchester audience, and as there is no place where I have
received a warmer welcome, so there is none where I value
it more highly. (Cheers.) I am able to congratulate you—l
speak to the members and friends of this institute—on a
success far greater than undertakings of this kind have
generally had to show. Established during 40 years, you
have witnessed the rise, and I fear also the failure, of the
great majority of similar institutions in England ; while
you, through all political and industrial vicissitudes (and
how_many those have been no one here present needs to
be reminded) have enjoyed a steady and a tolerably uniform
success. You have an income exceeding £3,000 a year,
of which by far the greater part is derived from the sub-
scriptions of members, subscriptions given in return for
value received. You have a debt, trifling indeed when
compared with your income, and which can hardly be called
an encumbrance, but still a debt of which there is every
hope you will soon be rid. The disasters of the last few years
have in no material degree, as I am informed, affected
your resources, though in some departments they have
slightly diminished the attendance. You have provided
for yourselves a building admirable alike for his archi-
tecture, and for its practical convenience. You supply
teaching for boys and young men, for girls and grown-up
women. You keep on your lists, as your President just now
told you, the names: of 1,300 members and upwards,
You number in your various classes, as well as from the
returns I can make out, consilerably over a thousand
students, though it may be possible in the various classes
some are counted twice over; and in the various compee
titions last year—the Society of Arts examination, the
Oxford middle-class examination, and that of the Science
and Art Department of Government you have held a
position which is not unworthy of this county, and of
this city. (Applause.) The results I may briefly state as
follows :—ln the Society of Arts examination, 64 certifi-
cates, one £5 prize, and three of smaller value. In the
Oxford middle-class examination, three senior candidates
passed, one failing. In the examinations of the Science
and art department, 60 Queen's prizes, four bronze medals,
and many honourable mentions. I take those figures from
the last return. I think your secretary may well have
given way to some feeling of natural pride, when he wrote
the passage which appears in your report of this autumn,
to the effect that a similar success has not been achieved
by any other institute in the kingdom. (Applause.) And
here it seems as if I might stop, and congratulate you
upon a success which has been so prominent and so com-
plete, relieving you at once of all further trouble. But you
will expect some remarks from me upon a more general
subject, and some such I shall offer, though feeling, as I
always do on such occasions, the utter impossibility of
saying anything in connection with these matters which
has not been said and better said thousands of times before.
We are here to support a mechanics' institution, or what is
commonly called such, though really it admits, and ought
to admit, many other persons besides those who can pro;
perly be called mechanics. There can be no question,
after the results stated, that the work which it professes to
do is done thoroughly. But there remains behind the
further inquiry, What is that work, and is it worth doing ?
I suppose nobody will care to deny that there is, in parts
of this country, some considerable prejudice against bodies
of this kind. Their foundation was an experiment, dating
from some 40 years back, when any educational work
not wholly in clerical hands was looked upon with a
good deal of jealousy. They were watched, therefore, by
a powerful class and party, with no very friendly feeling.
They had political and sectarian animosities to bear up
against; but that would not have hurt them. It might
even in the long run have helped them, since opposition
always stirs up zeal, if they had been founded on a sound
and judicious basis. Unluckily, that did not always hap.
pen, The founders of them, good and honest men, con-
siderably over-rated their means and under-rated their
difficulties. They started from a fallacy, obvious enough
when put in words, but which they overlooked in practice.
They assumed, or seemed to aasume, that because a certain
number of persons, under every disadvantage, had attained
to high mental culture, therefore, all men, under similar cir-
cumstances, might do the same thing. They attached, I
think, too much importance to a vague and superficial know-
ledge of many things ; they talked too much of the benfits
of knowledge in the abstract ; and they thought too little of
the practical application of it to the business of life. In
short, they had no experience of the matter with which they
had to deal, which was not their fault ; and they were more
sanguine than cautious, which is a temperament natural
to those who act as pioneers in a new undertaking. It is
just to them to add that they had obstacles to contend against
which now no longer exist. The people were then in a very
different state from the present. Party ran higher; the
bitterness of class feeling (now, I hope, almost extinct) was
strong. (Applause.) There was then no cheap press of a
respectable kind ; there were few primary schools; not one
third of the people could read and write that can read and
write now; and the great industrial towns, where alone
these institutions have thriven as in a congenial soil, were
less populous and less prosperous. But whatever the cause,
the result was partial failure—failure, that is, as to the
means employed ; for, as to the end set before thsm, that
end has been to a great degree attained, though in other
ways and by other machinery, Well, they have passed
away, and a part of their work remains, Some of those
institutions have perished ; some have become mere club-
rooms and news-rooms for the middle class chiefly ; some
have got into the hands of partisans, and are lcoked to as
part of the machinery of party organisation. Those which,
like yours, have survived, have altered their character.
They have become less ambitious and more practical. They
don't regard themselves, I should say, rather their promo-
ters don't regard them, as destined to achieve a great social
revolution. They don't in the least aspire to regenerate
society, whatever that pretentious phrase may mean. They
have learned to be distrustful of to )asting programmes and
sounding phrases. They find before them a real work to be
done, a real want to be supplied—and to that work and to
that want they address themselves manfully. The work is,
to continue for such persons as desire it, and to extend, the
very limited and imperfect teaching which alone a school
for the industrial class, or indeed for any class, can pretend
to give. That is their whole aim and seepe—and to me it
seems one of the most reasonable and practical description.
(Applause.) Take the facts of the case as we all know
them to be. A boy is taught in his school, well or badly,
as the case may be, till he is 12 years old. If his parents
are poor he does not stop much longer—and for myself I
value so highly the advantages for an early introduction to
the practical duties of life, that I don't grudge that early
departure. (Hear, hear.) But if he leaves an that age he
can have got very little beyond the mere ground-work of
knowledge, the power of reading, writing, and cyphering ;
and for my part I wish schoolmasters would recognise that
fact more clearly than they do. I don't think they quite
understand of how very little use it is stuffing children's
memories with facts, or with what are supposed to be
facts, to which no definite idea is attached. (Applause.) I
have heard boys rattle over names of kings and countries
when I was quite sure not one in 50 of them had any defi-
nite notion of what was meant by a king, or what the capital
of a country was. (Laughter.) I have always said, and
always shall say, that if a child learns at school to read
easily, and with pleasure to itself, to write well, and by that
I mean distinctly, vul to do common sums. the cohoolmaster
has done his share, and other agencies will complete what
Le has begun. If teaching is, as I believe, better on the
whole, in the higher than in'the lower classes, it is chiefly
on this account ; not that more is taught at an early age but
less; that the time is taken that the wall is not run up in
haste, that the bricks are set on carefully, and the mortar
allowed time to dry, and so the structure, whether high or
low, is likely to stand. (Applause.) That leads me to arm.
ther remark. People are beginning to find out what, if
they would use their own observation more, and not follow
one another like sheep, they would have found out long ago,
that it is doing positive harm to a young child, mental and
bodily harm, to keep it learning, or pretending to learn, the
greater part of the day. Nature says to a child " Run
about;" the schoolmaster says, " Sit still"—(laughter)--
and as the schoolmaster can punish on the spot, and nature
can only punish long afterwards, he is obeyed, and health
and brain suffer. (Applause.) I have nothing to say
against hard work—brain work or hand work; I believe it
to be healthy, and that at a riper age those whom it in-
jures are infinitely few compared with those whom it
benefits. But you must let nature have her way. Three
or four hours of attention are quite enough in a day for any
child—(hear, hear)—and if you accept that principle it fol-
lows necessarily that the school must leave much undone,
and that some other machinery of teaching is required, such
as that provided here, Not that I expect all young men,
or perhaps most of them, will care to use these means. I
know a great many of them won't, and that is a result
which I contemplate with considerable philosophy. (Laugh-
ter.) It isthe idlest folly to try to turn out men and women
as you turn out manufactured articles, all done by one pat-
tern, (Laughter and applause.) It takes some of all sorts
to make up society. How often, in the upper ranks of life,
one hears it said, " So-and-so is a fine lad ; he'll make a
capital soldier, a sailor, or a colonist, but he has no turn for
books. Do nut mistake me. I think that the studious type
of character is, on the whole, both the happiest and the
highest. Men of that turn have pleasures and resources
which others have not, and which never wholly fail.
That is no small matter, because sheer weariness, dullness,
the monotony of a life which is safe but not eventful, lead
to half the mischief which men do to themselves and their
families by falling into bad ways. All I say is (because wo
gain nothing by exaggeration) that those Who take that line,
those who care really for reading, and for self-improvement,
will never, 112 ally class, bo more than i fraction of the