The Sun.
London, England, 1846-10-26 00:00:00

powerfully as an incentive ; but it is to be feared
that such a hope has too much engrossed both the
efforts and the admiration of mankind.—(Loud cheers.)
I remember being greatly struck once with an expression
which was used by a friend of mine, though you will
perceive at once that it is not to be understood quite in
its literal acceptation ; but the expression was, that
" Heaven was made for those who had failed in the
world." Now, there are all sorts of unbecoming and
unenviable feelings, which often may accompany and
embitter failure, as, on the other side, every bright and
blessed quality of the heart and the mind may enhance
and adorn success. But to aim at success, to meet with
failure and not to grudge it, to be outstripped by a rival
and yet to hear a rival's praises with an unwounded ear
—these are efforts and triumphs beside which the ordi-
nary successes of the world are light and trivial.—
(Cheers.) Success, after all, in almost every walk of
life, from the aspiring statesman down to the ambitious
parish-beadle, will very often be found to consist of
very coarse, obtrusive, and vulgar ingredients, certainly
of no heavenly temperament; while there is no grace
of character, no spring of self-reliance, no element of
progress, with which failure, when not earned by our
own lathes, and when sustained with an even and
brave spirit, may not ally itself.—(Hear, hear.) De-
pend upon it the world, in more instances than we
can think of, has never discovered or crowned its best.
—(Cheers.) There are diamonds in Golconda more
precious than the Pitt diamond or any other diamond
that ever blazed upon the diadem of royalty.
There are pearls in unopened shells more lustrous
than any that ever yet shone on the neck of beauty.—
(Applause.) The ages, as they pass by, have known
their Homer, their RaphaeiPtheir Newton, and their
Shakspere; but I doubt not there are in the human
creation, as in all besides, prodigalities which have never
yet been fathomed.—(Cheers.) I believe it to be no less
true, that nothing that was ever given to us has, except
by our own fault, been lest or thrown away. What,
after all, is the material point? Is it to be Homer, to
be Raphael, to be Shakspere, or to be merely thought a
transcendent poet, or an unparalleled painter? Is it to
conceive in the inmost soul the lineaments of the Holy
Mother and the Divine Babe, or the idea of Lear on the
heath, or of Macbeth at the banquet; or is it merely that
would-be critics should commend the picture, or crowded
audiences should shout " Bravo " in the pit?—(Loud
cheers.) Carry away with you this great truth—carry
it to your daily task, or to your evening leisure, to the
quiet of your homes or to your social musters—that it
matters comparatively little what you may seem to be;
it matters even proportionately little what you may
actually do, but it matters everything what you are.—
(Loud cheers.) What you may seem is subject to a thou-
sand accidents and misapprehensions. What you may do
is often under other control than your own. What you
are is under your own—you may be all you should be.
Depend upon it, however humble may be any of your
positions in life, however obscure the labour which en-
grosses the precious hours as they pass—however insig-
nificant your whole life's drudgery—in this mean and un-
envied position, in this wearing and numbing drudgery,
you may mould for yourselves the qualities, you may
build up for yourselves the characters which princes, if
they knew them, would trust—which multitudes, if they
could discern them, would adore.—(Loud cheers.) I
feel that in touching on such high topics of morality
and conduct with scarcely authorised lips, I may subject
myself to imperfect explanations, and to much miscon-
struction. I know that it is often thought that ad-
dresses delivered upon such occasions are too apt to
minister to the pride of man, and to the undue adulation
of the intellect. I disclaim all such tendencies. When
I tell you you may be all you should be, I do not exclude
from the method of being so those aids and sanctions
which are too high for me here to dwell upon. lam as
confident as any one, that reason as well as Christianity
makes humility almost its most prominent grace.—
(Cheers.) Who would not be humble, who felt as he
ought the loveliness of virtue and the magnificence
of knowledge ?—(Cheers.) I should like to ask ono
of those fortunate men who have lately added a new
planet to our system, er who, as was beautifully said
on an earlier occasion, " have lent the lyre of heaven
another string"—l should like to ask them whether their
spirit has not rather recoiled in modest awe, than swelled
in self-sufficient presumption, before the secrets of that
space into which they have been enabled to dart a more
far-seeing glance than any of their fellows ?—(Cheers.)
And so it will be when the time has come which shall,
to our enlarged and perfected vision, unfold the whole
bright mechanism of stars, and suns, and systems. The
laws which will then serve to explain to us why their
stations are fixed, and how their manes are guided, will
only supply us with fresh reason for being more re-
verent, more acquiescent, more lowly.—(Cheers.) But
I feel that I ought to come down from the clouds, and,
indeed, from everything else, and I certainly could
hardly have lighted on a more radiant spot on the earth
than this present assembly.—(Cheers.) I have only to
hope that all who shall have partaken in its excitement
will bear away with them, not only the transitory
emotions which the scene must so easily excite, but a
settled determination, followed up by a corresponding
practice, to give fair play and full scope to all the highest
purposes of which the institution is, and may be made
yet more capable.—(Cheers.) This must be done by
associated effort. But you will hardly have failed to
have observed, at least such is the case with most
Institutions of a similar character, how very much of
the whole work is done by a few out of the whole num-
ber. Now, I want to inoculate all of you with the same
active and enlightened spirit. I want to call upon each
man and woman among you to make the work your own
—to put more individual energy into the collective body,
so that no member of the Manchester Athenaeum shall
think that he has done his duty unless he bas done some-
thing, according to his individual opportunities and
abilities, to give encouragement, efficiency. and credit to
the institution of which you have such reason to be
proud.—(Loud cheers.) As to myself, I have only fur-
ther to say, that if, when the gay glitter of this scene
has passed away—when the strains of music are hushed,
and silence has fallen on the voice of the speaker—if, in
the stillness of your quiet homes, or amid the clang of
your daily labour, you shall have derived a single encou-
ragement to ennobling reflections and to worthy pursuits;
or if, still more, any one of you—for such times come on
all of us—when he smarts under the sting of disappoint-
ment, or under a sense of the world's coldness and alien-
ation,
shall be reminded how little this really signifies,
and that, as I have ventured to say, failure is one of the
appointed means of access to heaven—if any word of
mine shall have contributed to this encouragement, or to
this alleviation, I shall then feel that I have not come to
Manchester quite in vain. The Noble Viscount resumed
his seat amidst long protracted cheering.
His Grace the Archbishop of Denims next addressed
the meeting. Ije said—My Lords, ladies, and gentlemen,
I was invited in the first instance to attend this meeting,
and was requested to make some observations, whatever
might occur to me, in reference to the subject of it.
without, of course, the possibility of its being supposed
that I could give you any information respecting the
affairs of this institution ; or, that I could come for-
ward merely to pronounce an empty panegyric upon its
merits, which are so much better known and appreciated
by yourselves than by any one else. It would be quite
superfluous for me to detain you with any lengthened
observations upon the important and beneficial tenden-
cies of such an institution, because, I think, the very
circumstances of my leaving behind, in Ireland, very
important and pressing business, to be present on
this occasion, shows how very highly I value an institu-
tion of this sort, and how warm is the sympathy which
I have with all the supporters and members of in—
(Cheers.) Very likely I may be expected to say, now
that I have come over, and have visited and inquired
into your institution, what I think of it ; and, it is
something to say with respect to it, that lam not dis-
appointed. I shall not, for I think that that would be
an affront to you, say that I feel surprised at the origin
of such an institution, or that it is anything more than
I expected from a great and wealthy place like this.
I feel, on the contrary, that cherishing that love
of commerce and activity necessarily characterising a
city like this, to have paid all attention to every subject
connected with gain, and to have neglected altogether so
important an institution for the improvement and en.
lightenment of yourselves and fellow-citizens, would have
subjected you to just reproach. I trust that you will
think it no insignificant praise if I say I think you have
done your daty.—(Cheers.) I was greatly interested in
bearing of such an institution in so very important a
portion of the United Kingdom—in a city which, I
think, may be regarded in some respects as a kind of
representative of the empire; for I can assure you, with-
out flattery—of that I am incapable—nowhere do I feel
more completely in England than when I am in Man-
chester, because it has to boast of some of the most dis-
tinguished arts, and some of the most characteristic feats
of energy, which the British empire ever displayed. In
other countries we may see the plough at work; we may
look upon splendid armies and upon fine architecture ;
we may see many things to be found in many parts of
the kingdom, but none so characteristic of the people who
were reproachfully termed "a nation of shopkeepers."
We have lived to see that " nation of shopkeepers" ob-
tain military, as well as other triumphs, over those who
have so reproached them.—(Cheers.) But I conceive
that all these triumphs are insignificant, compared with
the great triumph of diffusing wealth, comfort, and civi-
lisation over so many parts of the world as this empire
does, by means of her manufactures and commerce.
I say, then, that it would be a reproach to so wealthy,
so populous, and so active a city as this, if no attention
were paid to anything but the mere pursuit of gain ;
and therefore it is that I consider that you were doing a
duty, and nothing else than a duty, in establishing and
supporting such an institution as this, with the working
of which I trust you will have more and more reason to
be satisfied every year of its continuance. I understand
that the fruits of it have been perceived in the improved
character of the rising generation who have partaken of
its benefits, and I trust that those good fruits will be
en
yet more alai more. To instruct you, however, in
the benefits, the objects, and the character of such an
institution, would, as I have said, be impertinent in me,
'who know so much less of it than you do. I have even
less knowledge than yourselves, not only of this particu-
lar institution, but perhaps of this whole class of insti-
tions; for, altinsugl! I been engaged for a great
number of years in the diffusione of knowledge in one
shape or another—in whatbe called education,
either complete or partial, may Sin aleltdrusi on of know-
ledgeave never been
is a portion of education—yet
specifically connected with an institutionYh precisely of
this nature. With the higher and lower institutions I
have been officially connected. I have been
with the education in one of our universities, which
seminaries for the highest classes, the nobility,
gentry, and learned professions; and lately, in
still more important degree, I have been con-
nected with charity schools; but that which is imme-
diately between the two, that which tends to improve
the classes between the learned professions and
the very lowest of the people, I have not been so
specifically and closely connected with. Still, education,
in some shape or other, either by actively engaging in
the work, or hypublishing or editing works connected with