New-York daily tribune. [volume] (New-York [N.Y.]) 1842-1866, 1852-11-24
IpCTUREs AND LECTURING.

.r.a LECTURES AND LECTURING.
The Lecture season opens with even more
animation than at any former period. In the
GREAT cities where Lecturing has abounded
throughout the last ten years or more, it has
never hitherto been so prevalent nor 80 p0pu-
lar as AZ present we have often three or four
Courses proceeding at the same time in our
City, and al fairly attended Boston has hith-
erto been the focus of Lecturing but it must
soon yield the palm to New-York. Oursinland
cities now have their regular Courses for the
winter, often two or more in each, and We note
that those Of our own State have combined on
the excellent plan of employing the same lee
turers throughout, so that one will speak at
Albany for instance, on Monday evening, at
Utica on Tuesday, Syracuse on Wednesday,
Rochester on Thursday, and Buffalo on Friday
evening Of the same week, whereby many will
be induced to take the circuit who could not
be paid to visit only Syracuse or Rochester
from New-England to deliver single lecture
1t must excite a smile on some countenances
70 read the announcement that the managers
of these associated Lectures have decided not
to invite Radicals who discuss debataNe topics,
such as HORACE MANN and JoHS p. HALE, but
have secured the services for this winter of
less Eighty and more conservative essayists,
among whom we recognize on their lists the
names Of HENRY JAMES and RALPH WALDO
ENTHUSIASTICALLY the two profoundest and
most sweeping radicals ofour time. To pur-
blind conservatism, it is of less moment what
you do than how you do it; and if this circum-
stance shall secure from rigid conservatives
hearing for such brilliant essayists and far
reaching aeitators' as JAMES and Emerson,
by all means so be it
The taste for Popular Lectures is becoming
widely diffused In New-England, little villages
of FIVE hundred to fifteen hundred inhabitants,
the centers of agricultural towns, have their
Courses of ten or twelve Lectures, delivered
weekly through the winter months, often by
such men as EMERSON, WHIPPLE, PIERPoST,
WENDELL PIulLIPs, Cows. BRIeGS, Boutwell,,
&c. and this custom is beginning to be imi-
tated, though less generally as yet, throughout
our own State We believe it is destined to
become universal.
We would suggest the propriety of leaning
less upon scholars and persons of literary habits
for the delivery of these Lectures, and valuing
mere highly the inculcatiOns Of practical men.
If our most intelligent and capable Artisans,
our best instructed and most successful
Farmers, our prominent and scientific Inven-
tors. eould oftener be induced to ascend the
lecturers platform and give the young people
aoftheir own and the neighboring townships the
best results of their studies and their expert
ence, our Lectures would be rendered more
useful, and We think ultimately more widely
popular than they are now As yet, we observe
too much stress laid on the manner and too
little on the matter Of these exercises. II a
lecturer from a distant city be announced,
especially one already eminent or reputed
graceful rhetorician, the house viii be crowded,
while the substantial, practical man from the
next town, who can tell the people much that
they really need to know, will hardly call ont
hundred hearers Righteousness, TOO, and epi-
grammatic point, are far more regarded and
sought by most audiences than instruction and
real profit. These are errors to be amended,
and which in TING must be
One Of the good results of Popular Lectur-
ing sits tendency to assemble the entire NOV