rmation acquired
is hardly ever of a nature which admits of being turned into money. It
is, therefore, a pure desire for knowledge, as a thing good in itself,
and without regard to its practical application, which animates the
hearers of these lectures.

It is also my privilege to lecture to another audience in London,
composed in part of the aristocracy of rank, while the audience just
referred to is composed wholly of the aristocracy of labour. As
regards attention and courtesy to the lecturer, neither of these
audiences has anything to learn of the other; neither can claim
superiority over the other. It would not, perhaps, be quite correct
to take those persons who flock to the School of Mines as average
samples of their class; they are probably picked men--the aristocracy
of labour, as I have just called them. At all events, their conduct
demonstrates that the essential qualities of what we in England
understand by a gentleman are confined to no class; and they have
often raised in my mind the wish that the gentlemen of all classes,
artisans as well as lords, could, by some process of selection, be
sifted from the general mass of the community, and caused to know each
other better.

When pressed some months ago by the Council of the British Association
to give an evening lecture to the working men of Dundee, my experience
of the working men of London naturally rose to my mind; and, though
heavily weighted with other duties, I could not bring myself to
decline the request of the Council. Hitherto, the evening discourses
of the Association have been delivered before its members and
associates alone. But after the meeting at Nottingham, last year,
where the working men, at their own request, were addressed by our
late President, Mr. Grove, and by my excellent friend, Professor
Huxley, the idea arose of incorporating with all subsequent meetings
of the Association an address to the working men of the town in which
the meeting is held. A resolution to that effect was sent to the
Committee of Recommendations; the Committee supported the resolution;
the Council of the Association ratified the decision of the Committee;
and here I am to carry out to the best of my ability their united
wishes.

*****

Whether it be a consequence of long-continued development, or an
endowment conferred once for all on man at his creation, we find him
here gifted with a mind curious to know the causes of things, and
surrounded by