the book appeared much less interesting than "Katharine Ashton," or the "Experience of Life," but the idea was a most happy one; the letters made a holiday, no doubt, in the Bonchurch School when they arrived; and I dare say many of the girls who heard them will have clearer notions of scenes and customs which were thus described to them than they will get from all their schooling and reading put together. A spoken Address, accompanied with a few illustrative sketches, would be more lively still, and very popular, I am sure; and very useful, in many ways, would be this simple mode of letting the poor man share the rich man's pleasures.

In towns, where a higher style of lecture is wanted, there are numbers of professional men whose acquirements might be laid under contribution for the public service. Many have their own line of study,—their own favourite authors,-their own loved and cherished names on the long roll of men who have blessed the world in bygone ages, or have been the champions of some noble cause in recent times. There is an ample range of subjects, all of which may be made popular to a little-learned audience; and it is curious to find by experiment how such persons will welcome the details of some heart-stirring chapter in the history of mankind, when they have long been familiar with the bare outline, but have wanted the filling up to give life and reality to the scene. Some reading may be necessary to do the theme full justice; then the Lecturer will learn as well as teach; and if it should chance, as in some cases it may chance, that the composition, when finished, is the first fruits of his pen since School or College days, except what the post has carried to his

friends, he will doubtless improve his own style, while he tries to impart some information to his hearers.

I am particularly anxious to claim the help of intelligent laymen for this work, because their special vocations and studies would often suggest subjects of the best kind, and because many of the working classes are more afraid of something in a sermonising style if the Lecturer is a Clergyman. It will be seen that six out of the eight Lecturers in my volume are Ministers of Religion. That, I believe, is not an unusual proportion, as respects unpaid Lecturers, both in town and country; but, surely, there is no reason or propriety in our having so large a share in the secular teaching, besides having the pulpit to ourselves. It is not because we seek to monopolise the lecture-room; quite the reverse. I can answer for it that where Clergymen have influence with Committees, they will advise them to prefer the good Lay Lecturer when he can be had; but the difficulty is immense of inducing busy men, and greater still of inducing men of leisure, to take the necessary trouble. Some are modest; some are lazy; some see no good in meddling with their neighbours; some think it a vulgar kind of thing to be announced in placards, and stand up, like showmen, before an audience of strangers. Yet, surely, if some useful or elevating theme has been well treated, and a little kindness has been done to a man's neighbours at some cost, and even a score or two of intelligent, inquiring minds have had their interest awakened in some new branch of knowledge, or their sympathies drawn towards some noble specimen of humanity, an evening thus spent is better than the common dinner party,

where men fare sumptuously, converse languidly, and meet and part with little said to make any creature wiser or better.

The fact is, that all of us, Laymen and Clergymen alike, need to feel much more that our gifts, and leisure, and facilities for acquiring and imparting knowledge, are not our own, but belong to God and our country, if we can do good with any of them. All of us have a common interest in giving the people better educators than those who agitate for mischief or write for gain. Knowledge is power, says the favourite adage of the day; and certainly ripe knowledge, duly improved and rightly directed, becomes a regulating power of incalculable value. Let the thoroughly-educated take their proper place, and in a genial spirit use their gifts for the noble end of guiding and elevating the enormous forces at work among the half-educated, and they will be patriots in the best sense, without ever seeking fame, or assuming the responsibilities of public life.

It will not be difficult to find subjects in any variety if only our fellow-labourers are abundant enough, and if men of sense, travelled or untravelled, will tell out, in simple and natural phrase, what they have seen or done. One of the best lectures I ever heard was from a gentleman who had been employed under Mr. Stephenson in the erection of the Britannia Bridge. Another was by a friend of my own, who did the very wrong thing, as I must think it, of ascending Mont Blanc; but, having gone up and come down again, he did the very right thing of recounting his adventures to an audience who can never hope to see the Alps, and to whom some talk about them is far more interesting