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    of individuals may suggest . To state it once more in the simplest manner : I have long been convinced that evening reading parties would serve to encourage sociability and to diffuse knowledge in all grades of society . The fire-side is never so comfortable , never so happy , as when an evening reading keeps the mind pleasantly employed , whilst the body is at rest . Yet this

    branch of rational education , so well suited ,, amongst other advantages , to draw the labourer from the ale-house and the operative from the dram-shop , though it is of crying necessity , and ver y easy to be provided for , is absolutely and entirely neglected . The Lord Chancellor deserves the gratitude * of the country for providing that good and cheap books should be written ; let him now earn a deeper gratitude by providing that they be read .

    Addison thought that a sufficient number of sermons had been written even in his day ; and that they then needed only , to be well read . Many other good things have been written since the time of Addison ; and , like the aforesaid sermons , require only to be read well in the hearing of all the people . ' By way of illustration I would beg to ask , if the writers of the Bridgewater

    Treatises had employed themselves in devising and executing a plan , by which Paley ' s Natural Theology might be read with intelligence and spirit , and with appropriate illustrations , and so be listened to with interest by some hundred thousands of people , whether the real object of the donor would not have been more effectually accomplished , than by a further multiplication of dead letter treatises ?

    If it be answered , ' Every man will shortly be his own reader , ' we reply , that in reference to good reading , which always implies some difficulty , and a good deal of selection , we are too thoroughly convinced of the breadth and depth of the principle , 'I canna be fashed , ' to expect any thing of the kind . The very moderate success of the lecturers on natural philosophy at the London University * shows how little trouble w ill be taken , even

    by the educated classes , in the pursuit of knowledge . And if the expectation implied by ' every man being his own reader , ' applies to bad reading , we see little cause to congratulate ourselves on the probability that thousands will devour the worst pages of Lord Byron , who will find little zest in their own reading of the best pages of Sir Walter Scott . The ministers of the church may neglect or attend to these signs of the times , as they think best . But let them be assured , that those are their

    bitterest enemies who do not urge them to increase their influence , * I have attended two courses of these lectures with the greatest delight . Th « lecturer , Dr . Ritchie , has the art of making * the principle of a pump * equally intelligible and interesting . It is not owing to any defect on hit * part that a tho usand pupils are not attending his lectures , as would be the case if he were lecturing in Paris . He has been doubting what was at rirat a small number of pupils every year , ( whilst the KingVCollege lecture on natural philosophy has been an entire failure , ; and this delightful lecture must succeed in the hands of such a lecturer .

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    280 The Diffusion of Knowledge amongst ( he People .

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), April 2, 1834, page 280, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2632/page/48/