Mechanics' Institutions are also quite new since 1805, though they are now to be found in most of the large towns. The powerful impulse which established them seems in some places to have subsided; and in Birmingham and in one or two other towns they are said to be falling off. An intelligent lecturer on this subject, in the Birmingham Mechanics' Institution, Mr. W. Pare, has endeavoured to prove that this falling off is owing to a fundamental error in the principles on which they have been established. The promoters of these Institutions, he says, "have virtually excluded the more amusing and attractive branches of human knowledge, by aiming to render them too exclusively and immediately useful." Instead of imparting only such information as was connected with the daily avocations of the working classes, Mr. Pare would endeavour at the same time to excite in them a love of knowledge generally, and the spread of moral refinement. He would endeavour to "awaken the powers of general reflection, and to purify and heighten the moral sensibilities;" to effect, in short, that final object of all education, "the improvement of the moral character and habits, and the diffusion of happiness." * Nothing is more conducive to the happiness of the individual (the means of comfortable existence being first provided for) than the cultivation of the heart and of the affections. To teach man how to pursue this kind of cultivation is one of the most important, though almost wholly neglected, branches of education.
