ight otherwise be wasted in folly or in vice, will
be employed in pursuits which, while they afford the highest and most
lasting pleasure, are not only harmless, but purifying and elevating.
My own experience, my own observation, justifies me in entertaining this
hope. I have had opportunities, both in this and in other countries, of
forming some estimate of the effect which is likely to be produced by
a good collection of books on a society of young men. There is, I will
venture to say, no judicious commanding officer of a regiment who
will not tell you that the vicinity of a valuable library will improve
perceptibly the whole character of a mess. I well knew one eminent
military servant of the East India Company, a man of great and various
accomplishments, a man honourably distinguished both in war and in
diplomacy, a man who enjoyed the confidence of some of the greatest
generals and statesmen of our time. When I asked him how, having left
his country while still a boy, and having passed his youth at military
stations in India, he had been able to educate himself, his answer was,
that he had been stationed in the neighbourhood of an excellent library,
that he had been allowed free access to the books, and that they had, at
the most critical time of his life, decided his character, and saved him
from being a mere smoking, card-playing, punch-drinking lounger.

Some of the objections which have been made to such institutions as
ours have been so happily and completely refuted by my friend the Lord
Provost, and by the Most Reverend Prelate who has honoured us with his
presence this evening (Archbishop Whateley.), that it would be idle to
say again what has been so well said. There is, however, one objection
which, with your permission, I will notice. Some men, of whom I wish
to speak with great respect, are haunted, as it seems to me, with an
unreasonable fear of what they call superficial knowledge. Knowledge,
they say, which really deserves the name, is a great blessing to
mankind, the ally of virtue, the harbinger of freedom. But such
knowledge must be profound. A crowd of people who have a smattering of
mathematics, a smattering of astronomy, a smattering of chemistry, who
have read a little poetry and a little history, is dangerous to the
commonwealth. Such half-knowledge is worse than ignorance. And then the
authority of Pope is vouched. Drink deep or taste not; shallow draughts
intoxicate: drink largely; and that