MR. DICKENS ON THE EDUCATION OF THE POORER CLASSES.

Colonist, Volume II, Issue 156, 19 April 1859, Page 3

MR. DICKENS ON THE EDUCATION OF THE POORER CLASSES.

The Annual Meeting of the Institutional Association of Lancashire and Cheshire was held at Manchester on the 3rd December. Mr. Charles Dickens presided at tho distribution of the prizes in the evening, and related several remarkable instances of self-application to study on the part of some of the more humble recipients of the prizes:— Let ran endeavor to recall as well as my- : memory will serve me, from among the most interesting cases of prize-holders and certificategainers- who will appear before you, some two or three of the mist conspicuous examples. There are two brothers from near Chorley, who. work from morning to night in a coal-pit, and who, in all weathers, have walked eight miles a night, three nights a week, to attend the class in which they have attained distinction. There are other two boys from Bollington,»wlio began life as piercers at Is. or Is. 6d. per week, and the father of one of whom was cut to pieces by the machinery at which he worked, but not before he had himself founded the institution in which thia ;son has since come to be taught. These two poor boys wiil appear before you tonight to take the second-class prize in chemistry. There is a plasterer from Bury, 18 years of aga, who took a third-class certificate lust year at the hands of Lord Brougham ; he is this year again successful in a competition three times as severe. There is a waggon-maker from the same place, who knew little, or absolutely nothing, until he was a grown man, and who has learnt all he knows, which is a great deal, in the local institution. There is a chainraaker, in very humble circumstances, and working hard all day, who walks six miles a night, three nights a week, to attend the classes in which he has won so famous a place. There is a moulder in au iron foundry wbm, whilst he was working twelve hours a day before the furnace, got up at-

four o'clock in the morning to learn drawing. "The thought of my lads," he writes in his modest account of himself, "in their peaceful slumbers above1 rue, gave me fresh courage, and I used to think that if I should never receive any personal benefit, I might instruct them when they came to be of an age to understand the mighty machines and engines which have made our country, England, pre-eminent in the world's history." There is a piecer at mule frames, who could not read at 48, who is now a little more than 50, who is the sole support of an aged ""mother, who is arithmetical teacher in the institution in which he himself wag taught, who writes of himself that he made the resolution never to take up a subject without keeping to it, and who has kept to it with such an astonishing will that he is now well versed in Euclid and algebra, and is the best French scholar in Stockport. The drawing classes in that same Stockport are taught by a working blacksmith, who will receive the highest honors of to night. Well may it be said of that good blacksmith, as it was written of another of his trade, by the American poet :— Toiling, rejoicing,-sorrowing, - Onward through life he goes; Each morning sees some task begun, Ejich evening sees its close ; Something attempted, something done, Haa earned a night's repose. Ladies and gentlemen—to pass from the successful candidates to the delegates from the local societies now before me^ and to content myself with one instance from amongst them: There is among their number a most remarkable man, whose history I have read with'feelings that I could not adequately express under any circumstances, and least of all when I know he hears me ; who worked when he was a mere baby at handloora weaving until he dropped from fatigue—who began to teach himself aa soon as he could earn ss. a week—-who is now a botanist, acquainted with every production of the Lancashire valley—who is now a naturalist, and lias made and preserved a collection of the eggs of British birds, and stuffed the birds—who is now a conchologist, with a very curious and in some respects an original collection of freshwater shells, and has also preserved and collected the mosses of freshwater and of the sea— who is worthily the president of his own local literary institution, and who was at his work this time last night in a mill. So stimulating has been the influence of these bright examples and many more, that I notice among the applications from Blackburn for preliminary tesfc examination papers, one from an applicant who gravely fills up the printed form by describing himself as ten years of age, and who, with equal gravity, describes his occupation as "nursing a little child."