The Sun.
London, England, 1849-12-04 00:00:00

THE SUN, LONDON, TUESDAY EVENING, DECEMBER 4 1849,

word, place all your confidence in your own energies
and industry. Go on from one degree of reading
and study to another. Do not stop because you
have achieved something in the way of self-improve-
ment. But advance to more, and from more to more
again. It was a saying of the Emperor Napoleon,
" That there was never anything done as long as
there was still something to do.' Pelion may be
heaped upon Ossa, Alps upon Andes, but the skies are
still a long way off. We are yet near the ground,
after a whole life spent in efforts to soar above it. But
enough. Go on and prosper. Let the friends of
education rally round your Institute, and give to it
every help and assistance. Improvement, we have
been told, is realised intelligence. And civilisation is
realised intelligence. And order is realised intelli-
gence. And peace is realised intelligence. It is a
public treasure, a national capital, if I may so speak,
of which too large an amount cannot be invested.
Let it be your object to add to it continually. It
may be, as you go through life, that you will now
and then meet with. some old-world enemy of popu-
lar education, who, having once taken up a prejudice
• against it, still clings to it as vehemently and vigo-
rously as ever. He cannot deny that-our institutions
are doing good, but he will a.-,cribe it to accident and
chance-medley, and will maintain that they are seem-
ingly beneficial, but certain to be mischievous in the
event, which we would interpret to mean that de facto
they are capital things, whoever may assert that de
j'tre they ought to be very bad ones. I never hear
men talk in this fashion without being reminded of
the doctor who, having pronounced that his patient
would (lie in the night, was both astonished and angry
to find him not only alive, but much better, the next
morning. Still we will not quarrel with our melan-
choly prophets. We only ask them to fix their time
for the end of the world, and not to keep us
in a constant state of agitation by adjourning it from
day to day, as they find that the deluge will not
come nor the skies fall in. A prediction which is
neither more nor less than a floating policy, taking
in all time between now and doomsday, is necessarily
a safe one. I should like to see it put into a definite
and specific shape, within certan limits, and with
all particulars given of what is to happen within any
reasonable period. Or, if it may not he your
lot to meet with that now fortunately rara avis an
enemy of popular education, you may fall in with
some of its iceberg friends, who damage it with the
obloquy of faint praise, and who keep wondering and
wondering, while they allow that it has effected much
good, when and whether, or if ever, it will accomplish
those mighty results in the world which its more en-
thusiastic and ardent champions anticipate from it.
But recollect the ()hi saying that " Rome was not
built in a day." When Remus scoffingly leaped over
the walls of the infant colony, when Romulus, his
seat of government built of rushes and covered with
thatch, ruled over a thoesand miserable huts, inha-
bited by the wild spirits who hail gathered round
him, who could have foretold that it would one day
come the mistress of the world, the capitol of the
Caesars, proudly called the Eternal City, will its gor-
geous palaces and marble temples, its golden roofs, its
I'antheon, its Colisseum, and all its monuments and
miracles of art, whose full blaze of splendour none
can appreciate, but whose very ruins still rivet the
world upon them in awe struck wonder and admira-
tion ? Away, then, with our doubters as to the
fruits which education is one day destined to pro-
duce. They resemble children who pull up at night the
seeds which they set in the morning, and are dis-lp •
pointed and disgusted that gerrninatiln has not com-
menced and made great progress. But wise men
know, and think, and act differently. They plough,
and till, and harrow, and prepare the ground and sow
the seed, and then wait patiently for the long interval '
to elapse after which the harvest will arrive. And in
educatioaal husbandry, likewise means, not miracles,
must work out ends. There must be ploughing be
fore there is reaping. There must be a seed-time
before there is a harvest. Or take another illustra-
tion. The acorn has been called the father of forests.
But this patriarch of the woods is not surrounded by
its offspring at once. It is first planted in the ground,
and, for a time lost sight of, perhaps, forgotten.
But, nevertheless, it has entered upon its appointed
task. After a brief space a tender shoot, hardly to
be recognised by the eye, appears above the ground.
It grows. Heaven's warmth fosters it. Heaven's
moisture cherishes it. The shoot increases to a sap•
lime, the sapling to a tree, the tree to gigantic
oak.' "Eureka," the work is complete. And,
in like manner, the great task which our
educationists have undertaken to accomplish,
cannot be forced by any hot-bed process
into a sudden maturity like that of the prophet's
gourd. It is of the nature of things that it should be
gradual, perhaps slow. But we doubt not that it will
be sure. The acorn is planted deeply in the popular
mind. The schoolmaster, the institute, the lecture,
reason, thought, intelligence, all are fostering and
cherishing it. It has already shot forth, and is high
above the ground. Every day adds to its strength
and magnitude. Even on the confession of its coldest
friends, it has, from its very infancy, been producing
fruits gradually increasing to clustering profusion.
We may not fear, then, as to its power and influence
as it waxes greater and greater before the eyes of
men. Today it effects much ; to-morrow it will
accomplish more. Goon, therefore, and prosper, I say
again, as I finish. May the glorious cause of popular
education increase and multiply, and grow on from
the seed to the tree, from the cradle of hope to the
maturity of reality I May school be added to school,
and institute to institute, through all the length and
breadth of the land, as the branch only shoots forth
from the parent stock to send out other branches
from itself, the light of instruction extending
from the palace to the mansion, from the
mansion to the cottage, in the valley or on
the hill-side, from the city to the village, and from the
village to the hamlet, comforting the mariner in the
night watches, consoling the wayfaring man in all his
toils and troubles, cheering the solitary labourer in
the field, and illuminating the workshop with its
glorious beams, until at last the leaven of awakened
intelligence, spreading from country to country, and
from kingdom to kingdom, to the ends of the world,
and co-operating with the mighty and civilizing
influences of commerce, and the mightier and more
holy elements of Gospel grace, shall bring about that
brotherhood of nations of which angels have sung,
but which men have so long resisted, when peace and
good-will and love shall no more be strangers upon
the earth, but rule over it, triumphant and supreme.
Lie who contributes in the smallest degree to this con-
summation, may lay his hand upon his heart and say,
" I have not lived in vain."
The enainuala, in putting the motion, said that he
could not help taking that opportunity f expressing
under how great obligations they were to Mr. Greene
and Mr. Aspinall. He called upon
Mr. 11. GREGSON to move the next resolution,
which was a vote of thanks to the committee who had
arranged the details of the soiree.
Mr. IV. JACKSON seconded the resolution.
Mr. J. S HARRISON responded, and proposed a
vote of thanks to the Rev. Mr. Aspinal.
Mr. C. JonersoN, jun., seconded the proposition.
Rev. J. ASPINALL briefly responded.
Mr. GREEN having taken the chair,
Mr. It. H. HINDS proposed a vote of thanks to tie
Chairman.
The motion was seconded by the Rev. W. H. Hare-
FORD. _ _ _ _ _

Mr. HEYWOOD, in returning thanks, remarked that
he thought the subscription to the institution was too
low. He also recommended that the evening classes
be formed into a regular evening school, under a good
system, and that an application for Government as-
sistance would, under such circumstances, not be
made in vain.

The meeting then broke up, and the parties r,d-
journed to the ball-room, where dancing shortly e'er
commenced; James Heywood, Esq., M.P., and bliss
Thornber led off the first dance.

The arrangements for the ball appeared to give the
greatest satisfaction to all present. A deputation
from the Preston Institution, consisting of Messrs.
Grad well and Cameron, were present.

TFMPERANCE MOVEMENT.--The third of a series
of six great meetings in furtherance of the temperance
Cause was held last night at Exeter-hall; Mr. John
Cassell in the chair. The subject selected was, " The
claims of the temperance movement upon the teachers
and friends cf Sabbath schools," in advocating which
the various speakers, each taking a separate line of
argument, endeavoured to prove—first, that it was the
duty of teachers to inculcate the principles of total ab-
stinence; and, secondly, that to do so, they must abstain
themselves. The chairman, the Ray. Jab( z Burns, D.D.,
the Rev. James Sherman, of Surrey Chapel, T. B.
Smithies, &q. (late of York), and the Rev. Asa Mahan,
president of Oberlin College, United States, addressed
the meeting in support of these opinions. It was strongly
urged that the inculcation of temperance in the school-
room, and before the child went forth into the world, was
a much easier task than it would be found after a few
years of the temptations of society. A great number of
statistics and interesting calculations as to the useful
purposes to which the money wasted on drink might be
applied were also read. One gentleman, Mr. Smithies,
gave the result of his inquiries into the inefficiency of
Sunday-schools alone fur the purpose for which they
are intended, lie thought the inculcation of temperance
principles might remedy the evil. A fourth meeting
was announced to be held on the first Monday in
January, at which ten wc.rkmcn representing different
A s e grandtheie
aEo .
trades are to take part, and Mr. Joseph Sturge is to
preside.
meeting
Aifstearlstohe to be held
complimentarya t
Drury-
lane
to o
votes, and a hearty cheer for teetotalism, the meeting
broke up at about half-past nine.
Crosses are ladders that
lead up to Heaven.—
Eliza Cook's Journal.

THE POTATO CROP.— :We have taken some pains
to ascertain the present state of the potato crop in this
and the surrounding localities. The crop is, we believe,
now nearly wholly gathered in, and the amount of
damage oecasi.med by the Wight does not, so far as we
can ascertain, exceed one tenth; and even that tenth is
still valuable for feeding pigs,—Louth Advertiser.