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lead amongst nations in the promotion of *« peace on earth" would be a glory for our country to shine with undimmed lustre through all coming ages , and to which the historians of a remote posterity will point with pride and gladness when brighter discoveries shall have eclipsed our fame in science and the arts , and when better principles shall have associated only disgust with the fields of carnage , where military prowess erects its trophies .
The symptoms of intellectual improvement in the great body of the people have , during the late reign , been of an extensive and satisfactory description . Sunday-schools and other charitable provisions for the instruction of the very poorest classes have continued and extended their beneficent operation . There have been no indications of waxing weary in this noble kind of welldoing . A few years back there was a temporary enthusiasm for the
formation of Mechanics' Institutes , and similar foundations , designed for the advantage of a class above the poorest , which has relaxed or subsided . This was to "be expected . But notwithstanding the diversion of attention to other objects , the cooling down of ardour , and many instances of failure , there remain permanent facilities for the acquirement of useful knowledge , of which thousands of operatives avail themselves , and which constitute an amount of good not to be lightly estimated . As we look towards a higher
grade in society , the London University meets our view ; and in spite of the mistakes in its management , with all the mischief and peril they have occasioned ; and in spite , also , of the yet almost unmoved indifference of a large portion of the class which was especially contemplated in its institution ; we cannot but regard it as a pledge of present and of future progress . King ' s College will , we hope , be soon brought into a state of useful rivalry . Public establishments for instruction which already are , or apparently soon will be , in operation at Exeter , Bristol , and other large towns , excite similar feelings
of gratification . Nor should it be forgotten that even Oxford itself has done homage to the spirit of the age and the principle of utility , and has now its well-filled Professorship of Political Economy . Diligent attention has also been paid to the art of education . It has become more of a science . With much of error , of mysticism , and of quackery , there has also been much , and the way prepared for more , of solid improvement . The history of knowledge , as to its diffusion , if not as to its augmentation , will date much from the reign of George IV .
Useful works for popular reading , such as Constable ' s Miscellany , Murray's Family Library , Laidner ' s Cyclopaedia , and many others amongst which it would be inexcusable not to mention the publications of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful and of Entertaining Knowledge , have multiplied far beyond all precedent . The magnitude of the supply indicates that of the demand . It shews what multitudes are feeling intellectual wants and making intellectual advances .
It is sometimes lamented that our literature is so much more evanescent than it used to be ; that books , like Homer ' s heroes , neither live any thing like so long , nor are any thing like so big , as formerly ; that one generation of them passeth away , and another generation cometh , with unseemly rapidity . But this is not so very sad as it may seem . As the human race multiplied on the face of the earth , and men were improved and civilized , and invented arts and built cities , their lives became considerably shoTter than they had been in patriarchal times . Why should it not be so with books ? In elementary works especially > a good book now is sooner dis- >
Untitled Article
608 On the Reign of George the Fourth .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Aug. 2, 1830, page 508, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2587/page/4/
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