the opportunity of delivering his views on the subject of education in a speech, parts of which may still be read with interest, after all that has been spoken and written on this fertile topic.  It has at least the merit of being eminently characteristic of the speaker, whose whole life was an illustration, in the eyes of those who knew him best, of the truths which he sought to inculcate on the young merchants of Montreal.[12]

After remarking that it was vain for him to attempt, in a cursory address, to fan the fervour of his hearers’ zeal, or throw light on subjects which they were in the habit of hearing so effectively treated,

Indeed (he continued) I should almost be tempted to affirm that in an age when education is so generally diffused—­when the art of printing has brought the sources of information so near to the lips of all who thirst for understanding—­when so many of the secrets of nature have been revealed—­when the impalpable and all-pervading electricity, and the infinite elasticity of steam, have been made subservient to purposes of human utility,—­the advantages of knowledge, in an utilitarian point of view, the utter hopelessness of a successful attempt on the part either of individuals or classes to maintain their position in society if they neglect the means of self-improvement, are truths too obvious to call for elucidation.  I must say that it seems to me that there is less risk, therefore, of our declining to avail ourselves of our opportunities than there is of our misusing or abusing them; that there is less likelihood of our refusing to grasp the treasures spread out before us, than of our laying upon them rash and irreverent hands, and neglecting to cultivate those habits of patient investigation, humility, and moral self-control, without which we have no sufficient security that even the possession of knowledge itself will be a blessing to us.  I was much struck by a passage I met with the other day in reading the life of one of the greatest men of his age and country—­Watt—­which seemed to me to illustrate very forcibly the nature of the danger to which I am now referring as well as its remedy.  It is stated in the passage to which I allude, that Watt took great delight in reading over the specifications of inventions for which patent rights were obtained.  He observed that of those inventions a large proportion turned out to be entirely worthless, and a source of ruin and disappointment to their authors.  And it is further stated that he discovered that, among these abortive inventions, many were but the embodiment of ideas which had suggested themselves to his own mind—­which, probably, when they first presented themselves, he had welcomed as great discoveries, likely to contribute to his own fame and to the advantage of mankind, but which, after having subjected them to that rigid and unsparing criticism which he felt it his bounden duty to apply to the offspring of his own brain, he had