THE GLOBE. MONDAY, OCTOBER 25, 1880. MR. PROCTOR'S LECTURES.

Globe, Volume XXII, Issue 2081, 25 October 1880, Page 2

THE GLOBE. MONDAY, OCTOBER 25, 1880. MR. PROCTOR'S LECTURES.

To-Night and for three other nights daring the present week the Ohristcharch public will have the privilege of listening to an able exponent explaining and dilating upon the latest discoveries and theories in the astronomical world. One of the greatest hardships in colonial life is the almost total deprivation which the settlers perforce experience of all intelligence with regard to what is being done and thought of in the higher walks of the scientific world. Colonial life is sternly practical. Most of us have come to New Zealand with the sole object of accumulating the almighty dollar and the percentage that have accomplished their object and retired into a state of being where calm contemplation is possible, is so small as to bo almost unworthy of consideration. Besides, even these few are in most cases exhausted by the struggle. Their sole remaining object is to drop quietly down the tide of life, taking interest certainly in the social progress of the colony, but without any wish, or possibly power, to take any further part in the intellectual struggle which is progressing in the great world. They have reached the haven of their hopes, the blessed lotus-eating land where the coin of the realm is plentiful, and like the fabled inhabitants of that happy spot they object most completely to toiling with the oar in the tossing waves. To the masses, as we have suggested, both time and opportunity are wanting to gain any insight into what is going on in a world where the workers are trained men with a special aptitude for penetrating into the hidden paths they have engaged to explore. An opportunity such as the arrival of Mr. Proctor therefore affords will be eagerly seized by the inhabitants of Canterbury. His well founded reputation and his skill as a lectnrer ensure to those who purpose to attend his lectures a coming intellectual treat. Colonists have been reproached for a want of interest in the higher walks of literature and science. Such a reproach has only been made by those who have not lived for any length of time in the antipodes. Shallow writers of still shallower books rush through the country, and forming their opinion from the fact that the easiest topic of conversation is connected with £ s d, and that scientific institutions are few and far' between, come to the conclusion that colonists are incapable of appreciating enjoyments connected with loftier themes. A deep insight into human nature is not to be expected from these gentlemen—generally young gentlemen with a burning thirst for literary fame. They cannot be expected to know that the keenest longing, after a line of life is often to be found amongst those who, by the nature of their occupations, are debarred from entering it. No man enjoys the country more thoroughly than a Londoner. The higher instincts of his nature expand among the fields and hedges, and are proved not to have been dead, but only dormant. So it is in reality with the colonist. With the minority only is the interest in the more cesthetic and higher pursuits defunct. The majority betakes itself to a lecture by an eminent scientist with the enjoyment of a man who has long been imprisoned among the hard realities of life with but little chance of escaping from them. With a sigh of relief he shuts his ledger, and the words of the messenger from the fairy land of science descend, aliko refreshing and invigorating.