POPULAR LECTURES.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXII, Issue 5170, 17 October 1877, Page 3

POPULAR LECTURES.

(From the Montreal Gazette .) During the last few years the lecture platform, as an engine of public education, has been steadily losing ground, both here and in the United States. Societies which regarded it as an important part of their work to provide instruction and entertainment by means of the popular lecture, finding that it would not pay, have abandoned it in despair. Perhaps some of the methods adopted to keep the institution alive have hastened its decay. First-class lecturers do not grow on every bush; but we doubt the wisdom of securing one or two good names, and filling out th® programme with mere windbags, who talk “ an infinite deal of nothing.” Still more reprehensible is the common practice of “ sandwiching” a lecture between entertainments more adapted to the music-hall than to the platform of an education association. At any rate, the decadence of the lecture system cannot be attributed to public indifference. Some of our own gifted speakers, and prominent orators from the other side, whose names have been before the public for a generation, associated with the advocacy of great public questions, are heard with pleasure on the rare occasions of their appearance ; and during the last three months, the Canadian public has given proof of its appreciation of oratorical excellence in a manner altogether without parallel in our experience.' In Toronto (where his lectures affected the attendance at the ordinary places of amusement, in the same way as Messrs. Moody and Sankey’s revival services are now doing in Boston), the Rev. Charles Clark gave a dozen lecture-entertainments ; in Ottawa, and even in Quebec, the telegraph informs us that he always addressed crowded audiences; and now, in Montreal, not knowing when they may have another opportunity of listening to so talented and versatile a speaker, a committee of gentlemen have persuaded him to give a farewell course of lectures in one or two public halls. Mr. Clark came to this city a stranger, but he immediately took possession of the public ear, and he has given no fewer than sixty lectures in Canada. The secret of his success is not difficult to ascertain. He is a “ popular ” lecturer in the fullest sense of the term. He does not pretend to explain new scientific theories, or profess to elucidate recondite moral problems. He is simply an educated gentleman, possessed with a fervent admiration of the heroes of our national history, and a keen appreciation of the genius of our classic authors ; and when he stands on the platform, his genial manner, clear ringing voice, felicitous diction, and wonderfully-reteutivo memory, make it no marvel that his hearers are sorry when the stream of his brilliant eloquence ceases to flow. In the hands of Mr. Clark, the lecture is essentially a laborsaving invention, and hence is sure to be popular. People who love to finger idly the Gordian knots of history, or to wander leisurely along tho pleasant paths of literature,

get’their amusement and instruction together;: and receive in pulp and essence what it would take weeks of application and research ' to' assimulate in .bulk. Audiences do not want too much originality, or to listen to top many dry facts. When Thackeray was hunting up incidents in the l life of Wolfe, to assist him in writing “ The Virginians,” he said ; “ I don’t want anything about his polities or his campaigns, hut something that will tell me the color of his breeches ; ” and every man who aims at becoming a popujar lecturer, must follow Thackeray’s example. In a word, his lectures must be eutertaiuing. Given a fine orator who observes this rule, and the influence of the spoken word over the will, the judgment, and the imagination will be as potent as ever, and the popular lecture will continue to minister to taste, refinement, and intellectual delight.'