which she took in the happiness of her friends | out, and bring it within the sphere of his noble shed a peculiar sunniness over the aspects of sympathy, was the delightful study of her's. life presented by the common topics of alli- How often, during the last half century, has ances, and marriages, and promotions; and the steep ascent of fame been brightened by not a hopeful engagement, or a happy wed- the genial appreciation she bestowed, and the ding, or a promotion of a friend's son, or a festal light she cast on its solitude! How ofnew intellectual triumph of any youth with ten has the assurance of success received its whose name and history she was familiar, but crowning delight amid the genial luxury of became an event on which she expected and her circle, where renown itself has been realrequired congratulation, as on a part of her ized for the first time in all its sweetness! own fortune. Although there was naturally How large a share she communicated to the a preponderance in her society of the senti- delights of Holland House will be understood ment of popular progress, which once was by those who shared her kindness, first in cherished almost exclusively by the party to South-street, and recently in Stanhope-street, whom Lord Holland was united by sacred ties, where, after Lord Holland's death, she hono expression of triumph in success, no viru- noured his memory by cherishing his friends lence in sudden disappointment, was ever per- and following his example; where, to the last, mitted to wound the most sensitive ear of her with a voice retaining its girlish sweetness, conservative guests. It might be that some she welcomed every guest, invited or casual, placid comparison of recent with former times with the old cordiality and queenly grace; spoke a sense of freedom's peaceful victory; where authors of every age and school-from or that, on the giddy edge of some great party Rogers, her old and affectionate friend, whose struggle, the festivities of the evening might first poem illuminated the darkness of the last take a more serious cast, as news arrived closing century "like a rich jewel in an Ethifrom the scene of contest, and the pleasure be op's ear," down to the youngest disciple of the deepened with the peril; but the feeling was latest school-found that honour paid to literaalways restrained by the present evidence of ture which English aristocracy has too compermanent solaces for the mind, which no po monly denied it; and where, every day, almost litical changes could disturb. If to hail and to her last, added to her claim to be rememwelcome genius-or even talent which revered bered as one who, during a long life, cultiand imitated genius-was one of the greatest vated the great art of living happily, by the pleasures of Lord Holland's life, to search it|great means of making others happy. ADDRESS AT THE ANNIVERSARY OF THE MANCHESTER ATHENÆUM, Oct. 23, 1845. [MANCHESTER GUARDIAN, OCT. 25, 1845.] Ir there were not virtue in the objects and purposes, and power in the affections, which have called into life the splendid scene before me, capable of emboldening the apprehensive and strengthening the feeble, I should shrink at this moment from attempting to discharge the duties of the high office to which the kindness of your directors has raised me. When I remember that the first of this series of brilliant anniversaries, which is still only beginning, was illustrated by the presidency of my friend, Mr. Charles Dickens,-who brought to your cause not only the most earnest sympathy with the healthful enjoyments and steady advancement of his species, but the splendour of a fame as early matured and as deeply impressed on the hearts of his countrymen as that of any writer since the greatest of her intellectual eras when I recollect that his place was filled last year by one whose genius, singularly diversified and vivid, has glanced with arrowy flame over various departments of literature and conditions of life, and who was associated with kindred spirits, eager to lavish the ardours of generous youth, on the noble labour of re newing old ties of brotherhood and attachment among all classes, ranks, and degrees of human family,-I feel that scarcely less than the inspiration which breathes upon us here, through every avenue of good you have opened, could justify the hope that the deficiencies of the chairman of this night may be forgotten in the interest and the majesty of his themes. Impressive as such an assembly as this would be in any place, and under any circumstances, it becomes solemn, almost awful, when the true significancy of its splendour is unveiled to the mind. If we consider that this festival of intellect is holden in the capital of a district containing, within comparatively narrow confines, a population scarcely less than two millions of immortal beings, engrossed in a proportion far beyond that of any other in the world, in the toils of manufacture and commerce; that it indicates at once an unprecedented desire on the part of those elder and wealthier labourers in this region of industry, to share with those whom they employ and protect, the blessings which equally sweeten the lot of all, and the resolution of the young to win and to diffuse them; that it exhibits not merely to claim, but to select for his own literature, once the privilege only of a clois- a portion in that inheritance which the mighty tered few, supplying the finest links of social dead have left to mankind,--secured by the union for this vast society, to be expanded by magic power of the press, against the decays those numerous members of the middle class of time and the shocks of fortune; or to exult whom they are now embracing, and who yet in a communion with the spirit of that mighty comprise, as the poet says, "two-thirds of all literature which yet breathes on us fresh from the virtue that remains," throughout that greater the genius of the living; to feel that we live mass which they are elevating, and of whose in a great and original age of literature, proud welfare they, in turn, will be the guardians, also in the consciousness that its spirit is not we feel that this assembly represents objects only to be felt as animating works elaborately which, though intensely local, are yet of uni- | constructed to endure, but as, with a noble versal concern, and cease to wonder at that prodigality, diffusing lofty sentiments, sparkfamiliar interest with which strangers at once ling wit, exquisite grace, and suggestions even regard them. for serene contemplation through the most Personally till a few days ago a stranger to rapid effusions, weekly, monthly, daily given almost every member of your institution, or to the world; and, far beyond the literature rather cluster of institutions, I find now to-day, of every previous age of the world, aiding the in the little histories of your aims and achieve- spirit of humanity, in appreciating the sufferments, which your reports present, an affinity, | ings, the virtues, and the claims of the poor. sudden indeed but lasting, with some of the And if I must confess, even when refreshed by best and happiest passages in a thousand earn- the invigorating influences of this hour, that I est and laborious lives. I seem to take my can scarcely fancy myself virtuous enough to place in your lecture room, an eager and join one of your classes for the acquisition of docile listener, among young men whom daily science or language, or young enough to share duties preclude from a laborious course of in the exercises of your gymnasium, where studies, to be refreshed, invigorated, enlight- good spirits and kind affections attend on the ened-sometimes nobly elevated, sometimes development of physical energy, there are yet as nobly humbled, by the living lessons of phi- some of your gay and graceful intermixtures losophic wisdom-whether penetrating the of amusement to which I would gladly claim earth or elucidating the heavens, or developing | admission. I would welcome that delightful the more august wonders of the world which alternation of gentle excitement and thoughtlies within our own natures, or informing the ful repose by which your musical entertainPresent with the spirit of the Past;-happy to ments tend to the harmony and proportion of listen to such lessons from some gifted stran- life itself. I should rejoice to share in some of ger, or well-known and esteemed. professor, those Irish Evenings by which our friend Mr. scattering the gems of knowledge and taste, to Lover has suggested, in its happiest aspects, find root in opening minds ; but, better still, | that land which is daily acquiring, I hope, that if the effort should be made by one of your- degree of affection and justice which it so selves, by a fellow-townsman and fellow-strongly claims. I would appreciate with the student, emboldened and inspirited by the assurance of welcome to try some short excursion of modest fancy, or to illustrate some cherished theory by genial examples, and privileged to taste, in the heartiest applause of those who know him best and esteem him most, that which, after all, is the choicest ingredient in the pleasure of the widest fame. I mingle with your Essay and Discussion Class; share in the tumultuous but hopeful throbbings of some young debater; grow placid as his just self-reliance masters his fears; triumph in his crowning success; and understand, in his timid acceptance of your unenvying congratulations, at the close of his address, that most exquisite pleasure which attends the first assurance of ability to render palpable in language the products of lonely self-culture, and the consciousness that, as ideas which seemed obscure and doubtful while they lurked in the recesses of the mind, are, by the genial inspiration of the hour, shaped into form and kindled into life, they are attested by the understandings and welcomed by the affections of numbers. I seek your Library, yet indeed but in its infancy, but from whence information and refined enjoyment speed on quicker and more multitudinous wings than from some of the stateliest repositories of accumulated and cloistered learning, to vindicate that the right which the youngest apprentice lad possesses, heart, if not with the ear, the illustrations of Burns, by which some true Scottish melodist has made you familiar with that poet, and enabled you to forget labour and care, and walk with the inspired rustic “in glory and in joy" among his native hills; and with peculiar gratitude to your directors for enabling you to snatch from death and time some vestiges of departing grandeur in a genial art, which the soonest yields to their ravages;-I would hail with you the mightiest and the loveliest dramas of the world's poet, made palpable without the blandishments of decoration or scenery by the voice of the surviving artist of the Kemble name-in whose accents, softened, not subdued, by time, the elder of us may refresh great memories of classic grace, heroic daring, and softened grief, when he shared the scene with his brother and his sister; and those of us who cannot vaunt this privilege of age, may guess the greatness of the powers which thrilled their fathers in those efforts to which your cause― the cause of the youth of Manchester-breathing into the golden evening of life, a second spring, redolent with hope and joy, have lent a more than youthful inspiration. And while I am indulging in a participation of your pleasures, let me take leave to congratulate you on that gracious boon, which I am informed-(and I rejoice to hear it, as one of the best of all prizes and all omens in a young career)-your M virtues have won for a large number of your lence, that I anticipate the best fruits of your fellow-workers-that precious Saturday's half- | peaceful victories. A season has arrived in holiday-precious almost to man as to boy, the history of mankind, when talents, which in when manhood, having borrowed the endearing darker ages might justify the desire to quit the name from childhood, seeks to enrich it with obscure and honourable labours of common all that remains to it of childhood's delights-life in quest of glittering distinction, can now precious as a noble proof of the respect and only be employed with safety in adorning the sympathy of the employers for those whose in- sphere to which they are native; when of a dustry they direct-and most precious of all in multitude of competitors for public favour, few its results, if, being brightened and graced by only can arrest attention; and when even of such images as your association invokes on those who attain a flattering and merited popuyour leisure, it shall leave body and mind more larity, the larger number must be content to fit for the work and service of earth and of regard the richest hues of their fancy and heaven. thought, but as streaks in the dawn of that jocund day which now "stands tiptoe on the misty mountain's top," and in the full light of which they will speedily be blended. But if it is almost "too late to be ambitious," except on some rare occasions, of the immortality which earth can bestow; yet for that true immortality of which Fame's longest duration is but the most vivid symbol; for that immortality which dawns now in the childhood of every man as freshly as in the morning of the world, and which breaks with as solemn a foreshadowing in the soul of the most ordinary faculties, as in that of the mightiest poet; for that immortality, the cultivation of wisdom and beauty is as momentous now as ever, although no eyes, but those which are unseen, may take note how they flourish. In the presence of that immortality, how vain appears all undue rest Thus regarding myself as a partaker, at least in thought and in spirit, of the various benefits of your association, I would venture to regard them less as the appliances by which a few may change their station in our external life, than as the means of adorning and ennobling that sphere of action in which the many must continue to move; which, without often enkindling an ambition to emulate the immortal productions of genius, may enable you the more keenly to enjoy, and the more gratefully to revere them; which, if they do not teach you the art of more rapidly accumulating worldly riches; and if they shall not-because they cannot-endow you with more munificent dispositions to dispense them than those which have made the generosity of Manchester proverbial throughout the Christian world, may ensure its happiest and safest direction in timelessness for a little or a great change in our to come, by encouraging those who may dispense it hereafter, to associate in youth, with the affection of brotherhood, for objects which suggest and breathe of nothing but what is wise, and good, and kind. It may be, indeed, that some master mind, one of those by which Providence, in all generations and various conditions of our species, has vindicated the Divinity which stirs within it, beyond the power of barbarism to stifle, or education to improve, or patronage to enslave, may start from your ranks into fame, under auspices peculiarly favourable for the safe direction of its strength; and, if such rare felicity should await you, with how generous a pride will you expatiate on the greatness which you had watched in its dawning, and with how pure a satisfaction will your sometime comrade, your then illustrious townsman, satiated with the applause of strangers, revert to those scenes where his genius found its earliest expression, and earned its most delightful praise. If another "marvellous boy," gifted like him of Bristol, should now arise in Manchester, his "sleepless soul" would not "perish in its pride;" his energies, neither scoffed at nor neglected, would not be suffered to harden through sullenness into despair; but his genius, fostered by timely kindness, and aided by your judicious counsel, would spring, in fitting season, from amidst the protecting cares of admiring friends, to its proper quarry, mindful, when soaring loftiest, of the associations and scenes among which it was cherished, "true to the kindred points of heaven and home." But it is not in the cultivation and encouragement of such rare intellectual prodigies, still less in the formation of a race of imitators of excel outward earthly condition! How worse than idle all assumptions of superior dignity of one mode of honourable toil to another!-how worthless all differences of station, except so far as station may enable men to vindicate some everlasting principle, to exemplify some arduous duty, to grapple with some giant oppression, or to achieve the blessings of those who are ready to perish! How trivial, even as the pebbles and shells upon "this end and shoal of time," seem all those immunities which can only be spared by fortune, to be swept away by death, compared with those images and thoughts, which, being reflected from the eternal, not only through the clear meridian of holy writ, but, though more dimly, through all that is affecting in history, exquisite in art, suggestive in eloquence, profound in science, and divine in poetry, shall not only outlast all the chances and changes of this mortal life, but shall defy the chilness of the grave! Believe me, there is no path more open to the influences of heaven, than the common path of daily duty; on that path the lights from the various departments of your Athenæum will fall with the steadiest lustre; that path, so illumined, will be trodden in peace and joy, if not in glory; happy if it afford the opportunity, as it may to some of you, of clearly elucidating some great truth, which, being reflected from the polished mirrors of thousands of associated minds, sure of the opportunity of affording the means of perceiving and accepting, embracing and diffusing many glorious truths, which, when once fairly presented, although they may be surveyed in different aspects, and tinted with the hues of the various minds which receive them, may seem to have "a difference," will be found es- | all momentous changes of the world have been sentially the same to all, and will enrich the being of each and all. produced by individual greatness, so all popular and free institutions can only be rendered There is one advantage which I may justly and kept vital by individual energies-a result boast over both my predecessors in this office, which nothing can even threaten but that most -that of being privileged to announce to you insidious form of indolence which is called a state of prosperity far more advanced and modesty and self-distrust; a result against more confirmed than that which either could which not only the welfare of this great town, develop. The fairest prophecies which Mr. and of each stranger who comes to Manchester, Dickens put forth, in the inspiration of the and who may now hope to find beneath the time, in the year 1843, have been amply ful- shelter of your roof a great intellectual home, filled; the eloquent exhortations of Mr. D'Is- but also the exigencies of the time in which raeli, in 1844, have been met by noble re- we live, plead with solemn voices! They sponses. From a state of depression, which, remind you that existence has become almost four or five years ago, had reduced the number a different thing since it began with some of of members nearly to 400, and steeped the in-us. It then justified its old similitude of a stitution in difficulty, it is now so elevated journey; it quickened with intellect into a that, as to life members, you number 133 of march; it is now whirling with science and those who have made the best of all possible speculation into a flight. Space is contracted investments, because the returns are sure and and shrivelled up like a scroll; time disdains certain, and the rewards at once palpable and its old relations to distance; the intervals fair, which thus greet your life governors upon between the "flighty purpose" and the deed these happy anniversaries; you have of pay-through which thought might lazily spread out ing members no fewer than 2500-with an in- its attenuated films, are almost annihilated; come of £4000 a year-with a debt annihi-and the national mind must either glow with lated, with the exception of that on mortgage, and with good hope even that this encumbrance may be soon swept away, and of informing the Courts of Bankruptcy, which I understand have taken shelter beneath your roof, that it will soon be time for them to look out for a more appropriate home. Before I entered this room, I confess I was inclined to wonder how these great effects had been achieved; I knew they had been principally accomplished by the great exertions, the sacrifices scarcely less than heroic, of some few members of your society, who had taken its interest deeply to heart; but now, when I see the scene before me, so graced and adorned as it is, I certainly need be surprised at no energies which have been put forth,-I can wonder at no results that have been attained. Those exertions, however, permit me to remind you, having been of extraordinary character, you can scarcely hope to be renewed. You must look for the welfare of this institution to its younger members. To them I speak when I say, "To you its destinies are confided; on you, if not its existence, yet its progress and its glory depend; for its happiest success will not arise mainly from emancipated revenues, or the admiring sympathy of strangers, or even from a scheme remarkably liberal and comprehensive, adapted to all, and embracing the feelings of all; nor yet in laws admirably framed, to preserve and support its proportion and order; but it is by the vigorous efforts of yourselves perpetually renewing spirit and life in its forms-without which their very perfection will be dangerous, because, while presenting the fairest shows, they may, with less violence of apparent and startling transition, cease to be realities, and, instead of a great arena of intellectual exertion, may become only the abode of intellectual enjoyment and luxury-fair, admirable, graceful still; but the moving and elevating impulse of a vast population no more!-I know I wrong you in deprecating such a result as possible; a result I only imagine, to remind you that, as generous excitement, or waste in fitful fever. or forsake him;-while the voluntary toils of | thundered as the watchwords of unnumbered associated labour and study shall nourish struggles for power are now fast waning into among you friendships, not like the slight alli-history, it is too much to hope, perhaps to ances of idle pleasure, to vanish with the hour desire, until the education of mankind shall they gladdened, but to endure through life with more nearly approach its completion, that the products of the industry which fed them; strong differences of opinion and feeling while in those high casuistries which your should cease to agitate the scenes on which most ambitious discussions shall engender, the | freemen are called to discharge political duties. ardent reasoner shall recognise here the beat- But the mind of the staunchest partisan, exings of the soul against the bars of its clay panded by the knowledge and embellished by tenement, and gather even from the mortal the graces which your Athenæum nurtures, impediments that confound and baffle it, assu- will find its own chosen range of political rance that it is winged to soar into an ampler associations dignified-the weapons of its warand diviner ether than invests his earthly heri- fare not blunted, but ornamented and embossed tage; while the mind and heart of Manchester, and, instead of cherishing an ignorant atturning the very alloy and dross of its condi-tachment to a symbol, a name, or a ribbon, tion to noble uses, even as its mechanists transmute the coarsest substances to flame and speed, shall expand beyond the busy confines of its manufactures and commerce to listen to the harmonies of the universe;-while, vindicating the power of the soul to be its own place, it shall draw within the narrow and dingy walls to which duty may confine the body, scenes touched with colours more fair and lovely than "ever were by sea or land," or trace in each sullen mass of dense and hovering vapour, "A forked mountain, a blue promontory, With trees upon 't that nod into the world, And mock our eyes with air;" expressed in vulgar rage, infuriated by intemperance to madness, blindly violating the charities of life, and disturbing sometimes its holiest domestic affections-it shall grow calm in the assertion of principle, disdain the sug gestions of expediency, even as those of corruption, and partake of the refinement which distance lends, while "with large discourse looking before and after," he expands his prospect to the dim horizon of human hopes, and seeks his incentives and examples in the tragic pictures of history. A politician thus instructed and ennobled, who adopts the course which most inclines to the conservation of establishments, will not support the objects of his devotion with a mere obstinate adherence, chiefly because they oppose barriers to the aims of his opponents, but will learn to revere in them the grandeur of their antiquity, the human affections they have sheltered and nur while it shall give the last and noblest proof of the superiority of spirit over matter by commanding, by its own naked force, as by an enchanter's wand, the presence of those shapes of beauty and power which have hitherto nurtured, the human experiences which mantle tured the imagination in the solitude and stillness of their realities;-while the glory of such institutions shall illumine the fiercest rapids of commercial life with those consecrating gleams which shall disclose in every small mirror of smooth water which its tumultuous eddies may circle, a steady reflection of some fair and peaceful image of earthly loveliness, or some glory of cloud or sky, preserving amidst the most passionate impulses of earth some traces of the serenity of heaven;-then may we exult as the chariot of humanity flies onward with safety in its speed,-for we shall discover, like Ezekiel of old, in prophetic vision, the spirit in its wheels! round them, and the inward spirit which has rendered them vital; while he who pants for important political changes will no longer anticipate, in the removal of those things which he honestly regards as obstacles to the advancement of his species, a mere dead level or a vast expanse redeemed only from vacancy by the cold diagrams of theory, but will hail the dawning years as thronged by visions of peaceful happiness; and, as all great senti ments, like all great passions, however oppo site may be their superficial aspects, have their secret affinities, so may these champions and representatives of conflicting parties, at the very height of the excitation produced by the energy of their struggle, break on a sense of kindred, if not of their creeds, at least of their There is yet one other aspect in which I would contemplate your association before I enter on the more delightful part of my duty-memories and their hopes-embrace the past that in which success is certain-the soliciting for you the addresses of distinguished men, some of them attached to your welfare as well by local ties as by general sympathy, others gladly attending on your invitation, who feel your cause to be their cause, the cause of their generation and of the future. It is that in which its influences will be perceived, not merely banishing from this one night's eminence, raised above the level of common life, and devoted by knowledge to kindness, all sense of political differences, but softening, gracing, and ennobling the spirit of party itself as long as it must continue active. For although party's out-worn moulds have been shivered, and names which have flashed and and the future in one glorious instant, conscious, at once, of those ancient anticipations with which the youth of the past was inspired, when the point we have attained was faintly discerned at the verge of its horizon by the intensest vision of its philosophy, and grasping and embracing the genial idea of the future as richest in the ever-accumulating past which time prepares for its treasure. Then shall they join in hailing, as now we hail from this neutral eminence, the gradual awakening of individual man of every class, colour, and clime, to a full consciousness of the loftiness of his origin, the majesty of his duties, the glories of his destiny. Then shall they rejoice with us in the assurance that, as he con |