letters, and I have never heard that
those three were greater simpletons than their neighbours. There is
a Commission now at work on that very important and abstruse
subject--the Currency. I am told that no one there displays so acute
an intelligence of the difficulties that are to be met, and so ready
an apprehension of the important arguments that are brought forward,
and the practical ends to be achieved, as the chairman of the
Commission, who is not what is called a practical man, but a man
of study, literature, theoretical speculation, and university
training.[1] Oh no, gentlemen, some of the best men of business in the
country are men who have had the best collegian's equipment, and are
the most accomplished bookmen.

[Footnote 1: Mr. Arthur Balfour.]

It is true that we cannot bring to London, with this movement, the
indefinable charm that haunts the grey and venerable quadrangles of
Oxford and Cambridge. We cannot take you into the stately halls, the
silent and venerable libraries, the solemn chapels, the studious
old-world gardens. We cannot surround you with all those elevated
memorials and sanctifying associations of scholars and poets, of
saints and sages, that march in glorious procession through the ages,
and make of Oxford and Cambridge a dream of music for the inward ear,
and of delight for the contemplative eye. We cannot bring all that to
you; but I hope, and I believe, it is the object of those who are more
intimately connected with the society than I have been, that every
partaker of the benefits of this society will feel himself and herself
in living connection with those two famous centres, and feel conscious
of the links that bind the modern to the older England. One of the
most interesting facts mentioned in your report this year is that last
winter four prizes of L10 each were offered in the mining district of
Northumberland, one each to the male and female student in every term
who should take the highest place in the examination, in order to
enable them to spend a month in Cambridge in the long vacation for the
purpose of carrying on in the laboratories and museums the work in
which they had been engaged in the winter at the local centre. That is
not a step taken by our society; but the University of Cambridge has
inspired and worked out the scheme, and I am not without hope that
from London some of those who attend these classes may be able to
realise in person the attractions and the assoc