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260 METNODS OF SOCIAL REFORM.
tion, and had a very lively but brief career. Many recent
courses of popular scientific lectures arose out of the very
successful experiment instituted by Professor Roscoe at Manchester.*
Many attempts are just now being made to provide
sttractivo and harmless amusements for the people, and this
must, OE course, be done in a tentat.ive manner.
It is curious, indoed, to observe how evanescent many social
invcntions prove themselves to he; growth and change have
been so rapid of late that there is constant need of new inventions.
The Royal Institution in Albomarle Street was a notable
invention of its time, chiefly duo to Count Rumford, and its
brilliant success Icd to early imitation in Liverpool, Manchester,
E~Iiuburgh, and perhaps elsewhere. But the provincial institutions
httvo with difficultymaintainod their raison d’8tre. After the
Iloynl Institutiolls came a series. of Mechanics’ Institutions,
which, as regards the mechanic element, mere thoroughly
unsuccessful, but provcd thornselves useful in the form of
popular collrges or middle-class schools. Nom, the great and
genuino .sucoess of Owens College as n teaching body is leading-
to tho creation of nunlcrous local collcges of similar type,
This is the age, agnin, of Frcc Public Libraries, the practicability
and extreme nsefulness of which wcre first established
in Sdforil and hlanchestcr. When once possessed of local
habitntions, such institutions mill, it may ba hoped, have long
careers; but bricks and mortar are usually requisite to give
perpetuity to a social esperimcnt’. When thus perpetuated,
each kind of institution marks its own age with almost geologic
certainty. From the times of the Saxons and the Normans we
c:m trace a wries of st.rata of institutions superposed in order
of time. The ancient Colleges of Oxford and Cambridge, the
xnediievnl Guilds surviving in tho City Companies, the Grammar
Schools of the Elizabethan age, the Almshouses of the Stuart
poriod, the Commercial Institutions of Queen Anne’s reign,
a d so on down to the Free Libraries and Recreation Palaces
All the lccturcs delivered in the eleven annual series instituted by
Professor Roscoe at Manchester have been reported and published by
John Heywood, of Manchester and Pstcrnoster Row. Most of the
lectures may bo had separately for one penny eaoh.