and convenient for them; for the honour of God, for the better advancement and preferment of the said youth, and to the perpetual and thankful remembrance of the founders and authors of so good a work.’  The effect of this beautiful summary upon your minds will not, I hope, be weakened if I make a brief comment upon the several clauses of it, which will comprise nearly the whole of what I feel prompted to say upon this occasion.  I will take the liberty, however, of inverting the order in which the purposes of these good men are mentioned, beginning at what they end with. ’The perpetual and thankful remembrance of the founders and authors of so good a work.’  Do not let it be supposed that your forefathers, when they looked onwards to this issue, did so from vanity and love of applause, uniting with local attachment; they wished their good works to be remembered principally because they were conscious that such remembrance would be beneficial to the hearts of those whom they desired to serve, and would effectually promote the particular good they had in view.  Let me add for them, what their modesty and humility would have prevented their insisting upon, that such tribute of grateful recollection was, and is still, their due; for if gratitude be not the most perfect shape of justice, it is assuredly her most beautiful crown,—­a halo and glory with which she delights to have her brows encircled.  So much of this gratitude as those good men hoped for, I may bespeak for your neighbour, who is now animated by the same spirit, and treading in their steps.

The second point to which I shall advert is that where it is said that such and such things shall be taught ’for the better advancement and preferment of the said youth.’  This purpose is as honourable as it is natural, and recalls to remembrance the time when the northern counties had, in this particular, great advantages over the rest of England.  By the zealous care of many pious and good men, among whom I cannot but name (from his connection with this neighbourhood, and the benefits he conferred upon it) Archbishop Sandys, free schools were founded in these parts of the kingdom in much greater numbers than elsewhere.  The learned professions derived many ornaments from this source; but a more remarkable consequence was that till within the last 40 years or so, merchants’ counting-houses, and offices, in the lower departments of which a certain degree of scholastic attainment was requisite, were supplied in a great measure from Cumberland and Westmoreland.  Numerous and large fortunes were the result of the skill, industry, and integrity, which the young men thus instructed, carried with them to the Metropolis.  That superiority no longer exists; not so much, I trust, from a slackening on the part of the teachers, or an indisposition of the inhabitants to profit by their free schools, but because the kingdom at large has become sensible of the advantages of school instruction;