were, the spirit of emulation did something; from the belief that insertion was an admitted test of superiority, it was as much an object of ambition amongst these men to solve the “prize question” as it was by philosophers of higher social standing to gain the “prize” conferred by the Academie des Sciences, or any other continental society under the wing of Royalty, at the same period.  The prize (half a dozen or a dozen copies of the work itself) was not less an object of triumph, than a Copley or a Royal medal is in our own time amongst the philosophers of the Royal Society.

These men, from similarity of employment and inevitable contiguity of position, were brought into intercourse almost of necessity, and the formation of a little society (such as the “Oldham”) the natural result—­the older and more experienced men taking the lead in it.  At the same time, there can be little doubt that the Spitalfields Society was the pattern after which it was formed; and there can be as little doubt that one or more of its founders had resided in London, and “wrought” in the metropolitan workshops.  Could the records of the “Mathematical Society of London” (now in the archives of the Royal Astronomical Society) be carefully examined, some light might be thrown upon this question.  A list of members attending every weekly meeting, as well as of visitors, was always kept; and these lists (I have been informed) have been carefully preserved.  No doubt any one interested in the question would, upon application to the secretary (Professor De Morgan), obtain ready access to these documents.

The preceding remarks will, in some degree, furnish the elements of an answer to the inquiry, “Why did geometrical speculation take so much deeper root amongst the Lancashire weavers, than amongst any other classes of artisans?” The subject was better adapted to the weaver’s mechanical life than any other that could be named; for even the other favourite subjects, botany and entomology, required the suspension of their proper employment at the loom.  The formation of the Oldham Society was calculated to keep alive the aspiration for distinction, as well as to introduce novices into the arcanium of geometry.  There was generous co-operation, and there was keen competition,—­the sure stimulants to eminent success.  The unadulterated love of any intellectual pursuit, apart from the love of fame or the hope of emolument, is a rare quality in all stages of society.  Few men, however, seem to have realised Basil Montagu’s idea of being governed by “a love of excellence rather than the pride of excelling,” so closely as the Lancashire geometers of that period—­uncultivated as was the age in which they lived, rude as was the society in which their lives were passed, and selfish as the brutal treatment received in those days by mechanics from their employers, was calculated to render them.  They were surrounded, enveloped, by the worst social and moral influences; yet, so far as can now be gathered from isolated remarks in the periodicals of the time, they may be held up as a pattern worthy of the imitation of the philosophers of our own time in respect to the generosity and strict honour which marked their intercourse with one another.