but what triumphed through much evil; no man ever progressed to greatness and goodness but through great mistakes.

There have been great mistakes made in this Society, and there are many difficulties; but you will weather the difficulties yet. The mistakes will become your experience. Nay, I believe that the discipline of character which many of you will have gained by this struggle with an evil principle, and the practical insight which it has given you into. the true bearing of many social questions, in which I personally know that wild and captivating theories have been modified in your minds by this recent experience, will be invaluable. If only this had been gained, I believe the Institution would not have been established in vain. But if men say that all these difficulties tell against inquiry and education, I can only say that it proves we want more education. If I wanted a proof of that, I should find it in this— that the working men of Brighton have not yet got beyond Tom Paine.

This, then, brother men, is the reply to the taunts that have been made use of. But still I am bound to acknowledge this, and I do it with shame and sorrow,-that there has been a handle put, by some of yourselves, into the hand of the bigot and the timid man. What, then, is all that the tyrants of the past have said true; and all that the philanthropists have said false? Were all their gloomy predictions sagaciously prophetic? What have the tyrant, the bigot, and the timid said? That it is impossible to give power to the people without making them revolutionary, or to give them instruction without making them infidel. You owe it to yourselves and to your cause to cast the imputation from you. And if Infidelity presumes to lay her hand upon the

ark of your magnificent and awful cause, the cause of the people's liberty, and men say that it is part and parcel of the system, give that slander to the winds, and prove, men of Brighton, by the rejection of these books, and by the reorganisation of your Society, that the cause of instruction and the cause of freedom are not the cause of infidelity.

TWO LECTURES ON THE INFLUENCE OF POETRY ON THE WORKING CLASSES

Delivered before the Members of the Mechanics' Institution, February 1852.

TH

LECTURE I.*

HE selection of the subject of this evening's Lecture, "The Influence of Poetry on the Working Classes," requires some explanation. What has Poetry to do with the Working Classes? What has it, in fact, to do with this age at all? Does it not belong to the ages past, so that the mere mention of it now is an anachronism—something out of date ? Now, there is a large class of persons, to whom all that belongs to our political and social existence seems of such absorbing interest, that they look with impatience on anything which does not bear directly on it. A great political authority of the present day has counselled the young men

* As some of the topics contained in the following Lectures might seem out of place, as addressed to the members of a Mechanics' Institution, it may be well to state that they were delivered before a mixed audience. They are printed, with some additions, from the corrected notes of a short-hand reporter.

of this country, and especially of the Working Classes, not to waste their time on literature, but to read the newspapers, which, he says, will give them all the education that is essential. Persons of this class seem to fancy that the allin-all of man is "to get on." According to them, to elevate men means, chiefly, to improve their circumstances; and, no doubt, they would look with infinite contempt on any effort such as this, to interest men on subjects which, most assuredly, will not give them cheaper food or higher wages. "Lecture them," they will say, "on the principles of political economy, in order to stem, if possible, the torrent of those dangerous opinions that threaten the whole fabric of society. Give them, if you will, lectures on science, on chemistry, on mechanics, on any subject which bears on real and actual life; but, really, in this work-day age, rhyming is out of place and out of date. We have no time for Poetry and prettiness." If, indeed, to have enough to eat and enough to drink were the whole of man-if the highest life consisted in what our American brethren call "going a-head "-if the highest ambition for Working Men were the triumph of some political faction, then, assuredly, the discussion of our present subject would be waste of breath and time.

But it appears to me, that in this age of Mechanics and Political Economy, when every heart seems "dry as summer dust," what we want is, not so much-not half so much— light for the intellect, as dew upon the heart; time and leisure to cultivate the spirit that is within us. The author of "Philip Van Artevelde," in his last published volume, "The Eve of the Conquest," has well described this our state of high physical civilisation and refinement, in which knowledge is mistaken for wisdom, and all that belongs to man's physical comfort and temporal happiness is sedulously

cared for, while much that belongs to our finer and purer being is neglected-an age of grim earnestness-not the noble earnestness of stern Puritanism for high principles, but one which is terrible only when the purse is touched.

"Oh, England! 'Merry England,' styled of yore!

Where is thy mirth? Thy jocund laughter where?
The sweat of labour on the brow of care

Makes a mute answer: driven from every door.
The May-pole cheers the village green no more,
Nor harvest-home, nor Christmas mummers rare;
The tired mechanic at his lecture sighs,
And of the learned, which, with all his lore,
Has leisure to be wise?"

Whatever objection may deservedly belong to this lecture, I hope that no "tired mechanic" will sigh over its tediousness or solemnity. I believe that recreation is a holy necessity of man's nature; and it seems to me by no means unworthy of a sacred calling to bestow an hour on the attempt to impart not uninstructive recreation to Working Men.

There are some other objections, however, connected with the subject, which must be noticed. Poetry may be a fitting study for men of leisure, but it seems out of the question for Working Men;-a luxury for the rich, but to attempt to interest the poor in it, is as much out of place as to introduce them into a cabinet of curiosities, or a gallery of pictures. I believe such a feeling has arisen partly from this cause-that the Poetry of the last age was eminently artificial, unnatural, and aristocratic; it reflected the outer life of modern society and its, manners, which are conventional, uniform, polished, and therefore unnatural, and not of general human interest. I will read to you a description of that which one of the poets of that age thought to be